Botswana is progressively preparing to implement its National Determined Contributions (NDCs)-actions a country commit to execute to reduce its GHG emissions into the atmosphere.
Botswana made its submissions to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 2015.
The onus is to take urgent action to meet the long term goal of holding the increase in global average temperature below 2oC above pre-industrial levels.
Botswana submitted that its priority areas in reducing GHGs would be in the Energy, Transport, Agriculture, Mining, Water and Health sectors. Energy sector emerged as the lead emitter.
“Evidently, the residential sector is the major emitter mainly from use of fuel wood as a source of energy. Due to the fact that there was low rural household connectivity to the national electricity grid system, there was high reliance on fuel wood for cooking, heating and lighting, resulting in GHGs emissions. Industrial sector closely follows the residential sector. Consequently, mitigation measures can be targeted to these important sectors to realize significant reductions in GHGs emissions,” asserted the submission by the Department of Meteorological Services (DMS).
Energy efficiency was picked as the inherent mitigation (means of reducing emission).
Energy efficiency is simply defined as using less energy to provide the same service and achieve the same objectives. Consequently, with energy efficiency, the amount of energy consumption continuously decline over time while output increases or remain constant.
“For the country to achieve a reduction in GHGs emissions, it is important that electricity consumption is reduced with increase in population and economic growth. This will effectively result in reduction in electricity production and resultant GHGs emissions. Achieving energy efficiency can be realised through a switch from the inefficient incandescent light bulbs to Compact Florescent Lamps (CFLs) and Light Emitting Diode (LEDs),” the DMS submitted.
Fast Forward, 2018; and Lesedi Bafetanye, Performance Improvement Coordinator in the Department of Energy, highlights that they came with and drew energy efficiency strategy for the country with technical and financial support of the World Bank.
“The strategy has helped identify the energy saving potentials for the country. This includes refrigeration and air conditioning sector. In that strategy we estimate that by 2032 if we include energy efficiency principle we could save about 40 per cent energy consumption in our buildings. We have developed a technical booklet which assists building designs to incorporate energy efficiency measures,” said Bafetanye,
The DMS further submitted that efficient refrigeration is another area of energy efficiency where electricity consumption and production can be significantly reduced and hence minimising GHGs emissions. The estimated emissions reduction was based on the assumption that by 2030, the penetration of energy efficient refrigeration would be 50 per cent and 20 per cent at urban and rural households respectively.
