Title of paper

5.2 Medium- and long-term projects

Currently, the government has given priority to the Kudu gas power project. It is expected that Kudu can come on stream in 2018. The power station is going to be a combined cycle gas turbine power station. The Namibian government expects that the Kudu project will cost over N$ 13 billion. The plant is supposed to generate 800 MW of which Namibia will consume about 400 MW while the surplus is sold to other SADC countries.
For the Kudu project gas is taken from the Kudu field to the plant via a 170 km pipeline. The Kudu power station will be located at Uubvlei, 25 km north of Oranjemund. The Kudu gas field itself lies in the Orange sub-basin at an ocean water depth of 560 feet. It was already discovered in the 1970s. The field’s proven natural gas reserves are estimated at 1.4 billion cubic feet and possible reserves are estimated at 9 trillion cubic feet. The gas field will have a life span of approximately 23 years.
NamPower holds 100% equity in KuduPower. KuduPower is a special purpose vehicle that was established in 2005 by NamPower to design, build, own and operate KuduPower (The Namibian, 7 Feb 2014).
Kudu is seen as a strategic project as it will be the only large power station in the country. According to NamPower, Kudu is a platform for the development of energy intensive, export oriented industries vital to the next phase of Namibia’s economic development (The Namibian, 7 Feb 2014). It is expected to have a substantial impact on Namibia’s balance of payment through increased export earnings and will allow for the diversification of energy sources used for power conversion in Namibia, South Africa and the rest of the Southern African region (The Namibian, 7 Feb 2014).
The Final Investment Decision (FID) for the Kudu gas power plant will be made in June 2014 only. However, the Namibian government provided in its budget proposal for the years 2014/2015 an amount of N$ 1.6 billion for the development of the Kudu project and another 2.6 billion for 2016/2017. The Zambian Copperbelt Energy Corporation, a private power utility, signed a joint development agreement with NamPower to take over 20 – 30% of the Kudu project and to buy at a later stage between 200 and 300 MW of electricity through a power export agreement (The Namibian, 7 Feb 2014).
The decision in favour of Kudu gas replaced government’s plans to build a coal-fired power station next to Arandis. The power plant was supposed to produce 300 MW but it could have been increased to 800 MW later. The environmental and social impact assessment was introduced to the public in 2012. Although the project would have had severe detrimental effects on the environment, the EIA reached the conclusion that the positive aspects will outweigh the negative as the power plant is necessary to secure the nation’s electricity demand. Areas known as bioclimatic envelopes, where numerous endemic plants are found, would have been destroyed and Namibia’s overall amount of greenhouse-gas emissions would have more than doubled.
After cancellation of the Arandis coal-fired power station, the second long-term project Namibia is focussing on is the Baynes hydropower project.
For the Baynes power station, with an envisaged capacity of 350 – 400 MW to be shared equally between Namibia and Angola, the environmental impact assessment has been conducted and the conclusion is that the project is technically and commercially feasible (GRN, 2012: 47). Both the Namibian and the Angolan governments have agreed to develop the Baynes option further after studies conducted on the Epupa as well as the Baynes site along the Kunene, revealed that while the Epupa site was technically preferable due to greater storage capacity, the Baynes site would be less disruptive to the life of the indigenous Himba community and would have less environmental impacts. The Himbas, indeed, oppose the project and are supported by various international human rights organisations. The estimated project implementation cost will be US$ 1.3 billion. This includes the environmental mitigation costs, but excludes the cost for infrastructure such as transmission lines and roads.
Although hydropower is a renewable source of energy, it needs specific mention. Normally the only contribution to greenhouse gases by hydropower projects are from plants decaying within the dam basin. But the damages done to the surrounding environment by such large-scale projects like the Ruacana hydropower plant are enormous. Apart from that, hydro-electricity projects in Namibia are subject to intense geo-political considerations as all rivers with current and potential hydropower generation are situated along international boundaries and their sources of origin are outside Namibia (Ndhlukula, 2009: 9).
All long-term power generation projects by Namibia as well as the SADC countries are supported by the so-called Zizabona project. Zizabona is a joint electricity transmission interconnector project which links the power networks of Zimbabwe, Zambia, Botswana and Namibia. It is the aim to establish a second transmission corridor besides the existing central transmission corridor from Zambia through Zimbabwe, Botswana into South Africa. Zizabona is supposed to be operational in 2016.

6. Conclusion

The incentive to use 100% renewable energy has been motivated by global warming and other ecological as well as economic concerns. Namibia has abundant renewable energy resources and RE has become one of the hot topics throughout the world in connection with the international climate change debate. For many people, it has been the vision for Namibia to become the first country that meets its energy demand entirely from renewables, something the Danish Samsø island and El Hierro that belongs to the Spanish Canary Islands realised so far. Though Namibia as a densely populated territorial state compared to an island poses greater challenges, the chances were nowhere better than in Namibia, where most of electricity was imported and needs to be substituted by locally produced electricity expediently – a unique opportunity to plan Namibia’s energy sector from scratch. The already locally produced part of Namibia’s energy is almost entirely coming from a renewable source, namely the Ruacana hydropower station. If the Namibian government had turned this vision into a national policy goal, it would have been very likely that a run on investment in RE in Namibia would have begun. However, the Namibian government decided in favour of the Kudu gas project and thus it has become quite unlikely that Namibia is going to be the first country going for 100% renewable. Nevertheless, decisions by government to enhance RE technologies bear the chance of Namibia having a supply mix in future.