By The Citizen Reporter
Dar es Salaam.
Tanzania is the second-worst performer at harnessing natural energy sources to better the life of its people and spur development, notes a new global index.
Despite having a wealth of resources and tremendous potential for power generation, this country has only managed to edge out tumultuous Ethiopia in the 2013 Global Energy Architecture Performance Index (EAPI) report.
Tanzania ranks 104th in a survey of 105 countries, according to the EAPI, which measures how well national energy systems promote economic growth and development.
The index also examines how energy structures ensure protection for the local environment, and how they ensure energy security and access.It is not all bad news for Tanzania though, since it performs well on the environmental dimensions of energy architecture.
A senior analyst with the World Economic Forum (WEF), which developed the rankings, told The Citizen on Sunday via email that the fact that Tanzania ranks 5th on ecology means the country is not pursuing energy security at the expense of the local environment.
Energy systems are meant to do three things, experts say. They have to stimulate economic growth, deliver energy security and ensure citizens have access to the grid, all without ripping apart the environment.
Therefore, the EAPI effectively shows what Tanzania needs to improve on if it wants to dig its way out of the bottom of the global energy machinery.
“According to our index, the weakest dimension of the energy triangle for Tanzania is energy security and access,” said WEF executive Espen Mehlum.
The nation needs to figure out how to improve access to “modern and reliable energy for a large part of its population,” he argued.
Mr Mehlum was, however, full of praise for Tanzania for “doing fairly well on the environment sustainability aspect” of the WEF energy index.
He attributes this achievement to the fact that the nation has an energy architecture that has “a high share of alternative energy in its fuel mix.”
The WEF indicator gives Tanzania an overall score of 0.37 out of 1.0. Of the 105 countries the WEF examines, only 13 are in sub-Saharan Africa.
Tanzania’s score for the environmental dimension is 0.72 and it received 0.30 and 0.11 for economic growth and energy access and security aspects respectively.
With the exception of South Africa and Namibia who are ranked 59th and 79th respectively, all the other African countries have placed beyond the 80th position.
The only other appraised member of the East African Community is Kenya, which received an overall score of 0.43 to take the 93rd spot in the EAPI.
This essentially means Kenya’s energy landscape is better organised and that available resources are more properly harnessed than in Tanzania.
World Bank lead economist Jacques Morisset thinks the EAPI ranking of Tanzania is spot on. “The Tanzanian energy sector is in financial distress and access to electricity is abysmal at around 18.6 per cent,” he noted.
Economist Waly Wane concurs. “Access to energy is pretty dismal in Tanzania, especially in rural areas,” said the World Bank Tanzania analyst.
The ministry of Energy and Minerals, however, believes such rankings should not be taken as absolute truths.
Energy minister Sospeter Muhongo acknowledges the WEF evaluation is useful, but cautions that one needs to consider when the data used in the review was collected.
With recent developments in the gas sector, Tanzania will make major leaps in the WEF index by January 2015, according to him, particularly after the Mtwara-Dar gas pipeline is completed.
This latest energy venture should increase gas consumption in Tanzania to 784 million cubic feet per day, Prof Muhongo told The Citizen on Saturday midweek. “A lot of this energy will be inexpensive,” insisted the Energy minister.
He went on: “[The gas] will be made available to home owners and will also be used to generate electricity, produce fertiliser and run machinery to produce items like cement.”
Tanzania is gifted with diverse energy sources such as biomass, hydro, uranium, natural gas, coal, geothermal, solar and wind. Most of these are untapped, says the Energy ministry.
Today, wood fuel accounts for up to 90 per cent of total national energy consumption. Electricity covers a paltry two per cent and Tanzania gets the rest of its energy from petroleum products.
Despite its massive resource wealth Tanzanians are some of the world’s lowest consumers of electricity per capita.
Only 14 per cent of the country is connected to the national grid, according to Energy ministry data. This means in a nation of 45 million, only 6 million people have access to electricity.
Additionally, less than five per cent of locally-available power is from non-hydro energy sources. Chronic power shortages and perennial outages continue to plague large tracts of the country.
Policy makers have tried to solve electricity woes through various institutional arrangements including the use of power purchase agreements, to little avail.
Tanzania has been plagued by rolling blackouts and power rationing since it began industrialising. 1992, 1994, 1997, 2000 and 2006 were particularly bad years for local energy consumers.
From 2009 to 2010 local electricity users were subjected to crippling power cuts, with shutdowns lasting for up to 16 hour at a time.
The overall situation is not yet stable and analysts do not expect reliable electricity this year either. That is part of the reason the Tanzanian government is pursuing other energy sources.
The “externally-funded” Mtwara gas pipeline is intended to “address the vulnerabilities of the hydro dependant power sector and secure a durable supply of low-cost electricity in the medium term,” the International Monetary Fund said this week. |
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