Energy players for Sustainable supply

Electricity Supply Corporation of Malawi (Escom) employees under the company’s staff union jointly with unions in the energy sector in country say the employees are embracing efforts that will help to achieve sustainable power supply and energy to averting negative impacts of climate change.

Escom Staff Union president Charity Harawa said this on Wednesday at Sunbird Mount Soche in Blantyre during the ‘Just Transition Stakeholder Engagement’ conference.

She said the players in the energy sector are ready to embrace the concept of a Just Transition whose objective is to ease the impact of job losses in fossil-fuel sectors as a result of environmental protection policies.

She said: “As a country, we have often fallen victim to the effects of climate change due to over reliance on hydropower. On the other hand, climate change related droughts have rendered water as an unreliable energy source.

“It is against this background that the energy sector is coming together as we have realised that we have a role to play to ensure we come with solutions to the energy deficits and climate change shocks.”

Harawa said as employees of energy bodies in the country, they remain major stakeholders as such they are championing and repositioning themselves to understand and ably contribute to production of sustainable energy.

“We also want decent jobs from the energy source but we cannot have them without realisable and accessible energy in the country,” she said.

Weighing in, sub- Saharan Energy Network chairperson Enos Mbodi said as the energy landscape is changing it is important that energy players discuss and be part of solutions aims to improve energy landscape as well as inclusivity of workers in the transition.

“Climate change needs to be interrupted by a good plan among human beings to ensure that we mitigate and adapt to this. We need to be

 upfront and plan for disasters so that we are taken by surprise they a disaster strikes.

“As workers while our primary worry is jobs which are often lost during periods of transition, we want to ensure that we play a role in diversifying energy sources whilst ensuring we are included in the process,” he said.

On his part, Escom director Jacob Mazalale, who was the guest of honour at the event, said the Escom board stands ready to support conversations on climate action.

He said: “This is a very important exercise because we do believe. For us to provide sustainable energy, we need workers whose welfare should be safeguarded at all costs.

“There is therefore need for a call for social fairness and this means that workers must not be left behind by climate action and the transition to a low-carbon economy. Workers must participate in, and when necessary be supported to make, the transition.”

Presently Malawi is struggling to produce adequate power, with only 19 percent of the country’s 18 million people having access to electricity, according to the Malawi Sustainable Energy Investments Report.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Energy said the country needs about 618 megawatts (MW) to power industries and households without load- shedding.

The projected demand of 618MW is against the current Electricity Generation Company’s installed capacity of 539MW