Pre-feasibility study into solar energy rollout in Namibia

Published by Brendon Raw on

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:

Corporate social responsibility budget raising and spending
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

Corporate social responsibility disbursement plan
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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