The Electricity Control Board (ECB) says 23 independent power producers (IPPs) have collectively invested approximately N$5 billion in the country’s renewable energy sector.
ECB Chief Executive Officer Robert Kahimise says the investment has increased renewable energy’s contribution to the national energy mix to 11%, reflecting significant progress in Namibia’s efforts to diversify its energy sources.
Kahimise attributed this growth to the implementation of cost-reflective tariffs, which have made the sector more attractive to private investors by ensuring predictable and sufficient returns.
“The drive towards cost-reflective tariffs remains a top priority, not only for Namibia but for regulators in the SADC region. Originally, SADC had tasked its member states to adopt cost-reflective tariffs by 2013, the target was revised to 2019,” he said.
This comes as there is a substantial shortage of energy in the Southern Africa region.
“This situation will prevail over the next several years until enough new generation and transmission capacity has been built; thus putting pressure on energy tariffs, not only in Namibia, but in the entire SADC region,” he said.
The CEO highlighted that due to the drought situation in countries where Namibia imports power from such as Zambia and Zimbabwe, NamPower needs sufficient funds to procure power from alternatives when necessary to ensure the security of supply.
Kahimise noted that while several countries have made significant progress in reforming their tariff methodologies, most SADC member countries’ tariffs remain below full-cost reflectivity or are impacted by different forms of government subsidy payments.
He said this has led to power outages and load-shedding as being experienced in some of the SADC member countries.
“It is important to note that amongst all SADC Member States only Namibia, Mauritius and Tanzania have cost-reflective tariffs,” he said.
This comes as Namibia is targeting to generate 10 gigawatts of renewable energy in the next 20 years, 30 times its existing generation capacity.
Namibia currently has a generation capacity of approximately 486.5MW out of a demand of an estimated 600MW, with independent power producers contributing an estimated 70MW to the grid.
