Implementation of building and street lighting energy metering in 7 South African Urban-LEDS cities

7 Urban- LEDS cities in SA demonstrating the value of energy metering in municipal buildings and street light areas for low emissions development

Through the work that ICLEI Africa has done with the cities in South Africa over the past 8 years, it has become evident that the municipal building portfolio and street lighting are one of the key contributors to a municipality’s own greenhouse gas emissions. Therefore, making it imperative for municipalities to reduce the demand for energy to improve the resource efficiency of buildings and streetlights; ultimately curbing greenhouse gas emissions. However, in South Africa, a few buildings in these portfolios, if any, are metered and therefore little data is available to support efficiency interventions, thereby undermining the quality of proposals submitted to potential funders.  

In October 2020, the Urban-LEDS team together with the 7 local municipalities (KwaDukuza Local Municipality, Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Municipality, Steve Tshwete Local Municipality, Saldanha Bay Local Municipality, Mogale City Local Municipality, Sol Plaatjie Local Municipality and uMhlathuze Local Municipality)  and Anassa Holdings and LiveWire, the appointed service providers, began with the implementation of the pilot programme, known as the “Implementation of building and street lighting energy metering in 7 South African Urban-LEDS cities”.

The pilot programme aims to meet three main objectives; to install meters in 3 municipal buildings and 1 streetlight area; build capacity of the municipalities by training officials to collect and analyse energy data and; to support participating municipalities develop a robust proposal which can be submitted to potential funders, such as the National Department of Mineral Resource and Energy’s Energy Efficiency Demand Side Management programme, supporting the goal to reduce energy demand and greenhouse gas emissions.

Following consultations with the municipality’s energy teams, the buildings and street lighting area have been identified and the installation and the on-boarding of meters to an online data collection and visualisation platform has begun. As a first step, the service providers, together with the municipalities, will undertake energy audits, as baseline assessments to understand the energy usage of the buildings and identify any opportunities for energy efficiency.

This pilot programme is an opportunity for all the participating municipalities to demonstrate the value of energy metering in buildings and streetlights, and how energy data can be used to reduce energy use and emissions, particularly to ensure that pilot programmes such as these ones are replicated and up-scaled by municipalities.