Pre-feasibility study into solar energy rollout in Namibia
10. Corporate social responsibility trust
A corporate social responsibility trust will be an important to marketing ANE to the government: The CSR budget will evolve over the following timeline:
Years 2-3 | Years 4-6 | Years 7-42 |
---|---|---|
· 2% of capex injection from project funds
· Rollout of U-BEAP
|
· 1% of annual revenue funds
· Social carbon-funded projects such as solar cookers and carbon funded insulation |
SCSR Trust receives 25% of free cash from the plant investing in:
· Pre-paid solar PV and solar water heating · Repayments from the pre-paid solar will be invested directly into the community into: · Education and use of IT in education · Entrepreurship development · Energy provision for social services · Research into low cost clean energy solutions for the poor such as waste heat and geothermal · Clean water provision and desalination · Tourism development |
Universal Basic Electricity Access Programme (U-BEAP)
Portable solar packs -– Non-profit access to off-grid solar power – where every household that does not have electricity access is given a pack which comprises:
- A 20 watt portable solar panel, which can be taken down at night
- A small battery and charge controller
- A plug socket for a mobile phone to be recharged
- A socket for a small radio, which is to be included
- 100% carbon-funded insulation programme – funded by the voluntary carbon market
The cost of 200,000 units at $50 each is $10 million, where it is estimated that a bulk discount of 50% from current unit purchase retail price will be achieved. This project comprises about 2% of the project capital value. It is proposed that this project be rolled out in the two-year period on commissioning of the power station and is designed as an industrial offset commitment.
Pre-paid solar
Alluded to in the technology section, the majority of the population do not have a bank account, credit history or electricity. Some have electricity but no credit history so are on pre-paid. A solar PV roll-out and solar water heating roll-out is vital for these markets, so a pre-paid system will be created using a mobile banking platform, where the costs of using solar will be half of the cost of using on-grid electricity.
As the forecast credit recovery will be less than 50% of the revolving carbon fund, where bad debt ratios are estimated to be less than 5%, this cannot be funded on a commercial basis, so is funded on a grant basis through the community trust.
As with the solar water heating, electricity pre-payment proceeds will be re-invested into the community and will face community targets, so that there is peer-pressure to make payments. These pre-payments will fund the programmes mentioned in Figure 61 Corporate social responsibility disbursement plan below:
Reinvested corporate social responsibility funding
U-BEAP | Pre-paid solar | Proceeds from pre-payments reinvested in community development |
Industrial offset credit
Universal access to basic electricity) |
Solar PV – prepaid
Pre-paid – solar water heating |
Solar cookers
Carbon funded insulation One laptop per child Water purification Permaculture Educational IT – school.net Entrepreneurship development Social media tourism strategy |
After the U-BEAP project has been rolled-out in years 3 & 4 of the project – i.e. in the first two years after the plant has been commissioned, the CSR fund will invest in the following projects:
- Carbon funded insulation of building
- 60% funded solar cookers will also be offered, along with a solar cooker breadmaking entrepreneurship programme, which is estimated to create 1,000 jobs.
- A One-Laptop-per-Child roll-out, based on the $35 iPad-like device developed in India
- Water purification kits and solar water pumps to access underground water
- Permaculture and micro-climate development
- Entrepreneurship development programmes
- Social media tourism strategy
This programme offers vast social returns, over a two-year period two-thirds of the population goes from having no electricity to having access to light at night, the ability to charge a cell phone, listen to the radio and be able to cook their food without wood – which costs over $1 per meal. It is also designed to cater for both peri-urban areas, where informal dwellings are not suitable for electricity access as well as traditional development strategy that focus more on sparsely populated rural areas.
A more detailed discussion and budgeting of this proposed programme is available to interested parties.
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