The Oil Drum

The ongoing energy supply problems that have emerged from continued growth of the economies of Southern Africa, and which I wrote about following my trip down there, may well be an early precursor to a future that many countries might come to face before too long. Signs that overall energy demands have been rising beyond the immediate capacity of local systems to provide supply can be transiently overcome by increasing imports of power. But when the supply of that power becomes threatened, or disappears due to factors that can range from the increasing domestic demand for power – which led South Africa to restrict exports – through the collapse of domestic order – the problems that Zimbabwe currently faces, or the inability to deliver available power (Mozambique has large hydro power reserves but cannot transmit the power to places such as Botswana) then suddenly the switches on the wall don’t work.

There are lots of excuses why not to make investments in new power plants based on domestically produced energy, particularly in a changing political climate, but the failure to properly prepare for the future by building anticipated capacity, or to assume the availability of foreign supply sources (such as increased volumes of LNG) that may not be around when needed may well mean that at some point in the non-too-distant future the switches on our walls may not work either.