South African Low Pressure Solar Water Heating Mass Rollout Program and Its Impacts on Carbon

摘要

The South African Government embarked on an ambitious mass rollout Low Pressure (LP) Solar Water Heating (SWH) Program aiming to improve the quality of life of its citizens and relieving the pressure on country's electricity supply system, while achieving a reduction in carbon emissions. The world's first approved programmatic carbon trading program of activities on the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was listed in South Africa based on the LP SWH program, while meeting all the requirements in terms of project implementation, trading, verification and validation. This article is intended to review the main results of how solar water heating (SWH) affected the carbon trading program activities, including the energy and environmental impacts, which could be used as a road map for organizations and countries around the world in similar projects supporting effective mitigating actions to combat the climate change process. The carbon trading program has had a significant impact on the reduction of carbon emissions and electrical energy offsets, because it has happened at a critical stage for South Africa. The program releases the demand burden on a strained electrical infrastructure. In addition, the project has proven social economic impacts and mitigates against energy poverty in an economy with one of the highest unemployment rates on the planet.