Without investment in new energy projects, Mozambique is in danger of running into an electricity shortage as from 2007, the chairman of the publicly-owned electricity company, EDM, Vicente Veloso, has warned.
Interviewed in Thursday's issue of the Beira daily paper "Diario de Mocambique", Veloso sounded the alert: major future industrial projects could be endangered unless more electricity was generated.
"My intention is not to alarm people", said Veloso. "We don't want to be alarmist, but we want to make everyone involved aware that something must be done. If nothing is done, we shall have a crisis. For the time being, however, there is no crisis - we have reserves of power up until 2007".
But 2007 was not that far distant - in planning terms, "it's the day after tomorrow", said Veloso. "For sources of energy we have to plan eight, nine, ten years in advance and not on the spur of the moment. What we are warning people of is that in the region, in South Africa, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Botswana, we don't have electricity for new projects".
Veloso noted that there is a project for an aluminium smelter in Beira, which will need 600 megawatts of power. "Right now EDM doesn't have a spare 600 megawatts in Mozambique", he said. "And I'm going to have difficulties acquiring 600 megawatts from South Africa. Zimbabwe doesn't have it either".
"Then there's Corridor Sands (the project to mine titanium- bearing heavy sands in Gaza province) which will need between 150 and 300 megawatts. I haven't got it !", exclaimed Veloso. "MOZAL (the aluminium smelter on the outskirts of Maputo) wants to expand again with a third phase. That needs between 300 and 500 megawatts".
"If building work on these projects starts tomorrow, I don't have the electricity for them to operate in two or three years time".
Veloso thought it was time for the governments of southern Africa to look urgently for additional sources of power - natural gas (in Namibia, Zambia and Angola, as well as in Mozambique itself) could be one such source.
But far and away the greatest potential source of power lies in the Congo river basin. The projected dams in the Democratic Republic of Congo could solve the region's energy problems for decades to come: they could generate 100,000 megawatts.
But that would require billions of dollars of investment, and "it is not easy to mobilise such sums", Veloso remarked.
However, inter-ministerial committees and technical teams, involved the DRC, Angola, Namibia, South Africa and Botswana, were working on the "Western Corridor". This could take Congolese power all the way to Cape Town, running through Angola and Namibia, and with a branch into Botswana and thence to northern South Africa. This would cost somewhere between two and five billion dollars. But even if it started tomorrow, the power would not be available for another seven or eight years.
The Mozambican government hopes to build a new dam on the Zambezi, at Mepanda Ncua, some 70 kilometres downstream from the existing dam at Cahora Bassa - but again, even if a start was made on Mepanda Ncua at once, it would take another eight years before the power would be available.
And Mepanda Ncua, despite favourable initial studies, is currently stalled. The government is looking for funding, but this has been complicated by uncertainty over the future of Cahora Bassa.
Currently Cahora Bassa is effectively owned by Portugal, which has an 82 per cent stake in the dam operating company, HCB.
The Mozambican state is a minority shareholder, with only 18 per cent. The government wants to take full control of Cahora Bassa, but negotiations with Lisbon have been slow. The Portuguese government claims that HCB owes the Portuguese treasury a debt of about two billion dollars.
Cahora Bassa can generate 2,075 megawatts - but most of this power is currently being sold to South Africa and Zimbabwe. Under the current arrangements, if Mozambique wants to increase the amount of HCB power purchased by EDM, it must negotiate both with Portugal, and with the South African electricity company, Eskom.
Fonte: AIM
