Research on off-grid practices in South Africa has defined three forms of off-gridding, with the reasons for being off-grid varying depending on income background, which in turn highlights that decentralized energy transitions can reproduce existing inequalities.
Research of the University of Cambridge has developed a framework that identifies forms of off-gridding in South Africa.
In the research paper “Towards a framework of ‘off-gridding’: conceptualising the practices and processes of urban energy transitions in South Africa”, available in the magazine Geoforum, Corresponding author Joanna Watterson uses interview data and field observations from high-, middle- and low-income neighborhoods in Cape Town and Johannesburg to define the reasons why households are independent of the electricity grid.
Watterson says there are three categories of off-gridding in South Africa that are “inextricably linked to state processes that enable, restrict, encourage and/or prohibit off-gridding.”
The first category, disconnection, refers to the moment when end users leave the electricity grid completely and concerns the households with the highest incomes. Watterson found that off-gridding usually takes the form of home solar systems with large battery storage and is the rarest form of off-gridding due to its high cost, accounting for approximately 1% of all households.
This form of off-gridding “reflects a form of survival-based secession from end users in response to a failing network and the state’s perceived secession from the democratic post-apartheid model,” Watterson says in the research paper, and is the form of off-gridding that the state is most averse to, as municipalities worry about subsidizing basic services for low-income consumers if too many consumers segregate.
The second form of off-gridding, marginalization, defines when end users are forced to leave the grid due to failure or unaffordability, or when they cannot connect due to insufficient supply or opportunities. This categorization generally refers to the lowest income households, which are mainly located in peripheral townships or informal settlements and often rely on self-help forms of energy.
Watterson says this category includes a small but significant portion of the population, estimated at between 4% and 5.5% of all households, and “illustrates the lasting legacy of urban exclusion in the apartheid era.”
The third off-grid category, known as supplementation, refers to cases where alternative energy sources compensate for a lack of electricity supply from the grid that households may or may not be connected to or able to pay for.
The research paper says this is the most common form of off-gridding and manifests itself in different ways across income groups and spaces. While middle- and high-income households are more likely to have inverters, generators, solar energy systems and battery storage, lower-income households are more likely to have more precarious and hazardous energy sources, such as firewood, paraffin or informal connections to the electricity grid. In some cases, lower-income households may have access to private energy infrastructure, such as solar mini-grids.
Watterson says this third off-gridding category “signals a reframing of South Africa’s post-apartheid vision of an inclusive public network as a cornerstone of rights-based citizenship.” She then adds that the general off-gridding framework “reveals a departure from South Africa’s vision of democracy at both national and city levels, with implications for citizenship, urban inequality and a just energy transition.”
“Off-gridding reveals the ways in which decentralized energy transitions can reproduce existing inequalities and have profound consequences for just transitions,” writes Watterson. Her Analysis adds that if municipalities enable or encourage certain forms of hybrid or complementary grid practices, such as grid-tied solar systems, while restricting others, such as the private provision of solar mini-grids in informal settlements to maintain the grid’s political and financial centrality, they “risk entrenching historic urban inequalities and jeopardizing the achievement of a truly just energy transition.”
Watterson’s conclusion also indicates that the off-gridding framework can contribute to debates on urban infrastructure and just transitions outside South Africa, especially in southern and post-colonial cities.
“The framework contributes a tool for critically analyzing the implications of decentralized energy transitions for urban residents, especially in contexts of inequality, amid network liberalization and decarbonization and global agendas towards just transitions,” the article concludes. “Highlighting the practices and processes at the heart of these transitions is important because they reveal the potential to redress or reproduce urban inequality, and thus the limitations of just transition frameworks when unevenly applied or governed.”
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