We are not alone — energy crises are a growing global phenomenon

22 Sep 2022

Rolling blackouts are hardly a novelty in South Africa. But amid a global energy crisis, countries worldwide are struggling with electricity supply. Daily Maverick takes a look at a few others undergoing power failures.

While many South Africans are furious with Eskom and fed up with the plague of rolling blackouts, the energy crisis is not unique to this country.

From Kosovo in Europe to Sri Lanka in Asia and to Cuba in the Caribbean, power outages have been wreaking havoc around the world this year.

“The world has never witnessed such a major energy crisis in terms of its depth and its complexity,” the head of the International Energy Agency (IEA) Fatih Birol said at a global energy forum in Sydney in July.

“We might not have seen the worst of it yet — this is affecting the entire world.”

While many governments are grappling with an electricity supply unable to keep up with rising demand, some countries have been toiling in the dark for years.

Read more in Daily Maverick: “SA lags behind in facing up to the magnitude of global energy insecurity”

“Different countries have different issues,” said energy analyst and electrical engineer Chris Yelland. Each country has its own “unique problems, unique generation mix and unique situations”.

In South Africa, “we tend to neglect maintenance, cut back on costs, don’t build new generation capacity, skip maintenance intervals, damage the plant, push it too hard,” Yelland told Daily Maverick.

“It’s like having an old car that hasn’t been serviced for many years and you push the hell out of it. And if you do that, you will have breakdowns,” he said, referring to the running of our flailing state power utility, Eskom.

Crippling electricity shortages

Despite sitting on top of one of Africa’s largest oil reserves, Libya has been hit with planned power cuts reportedly lasting up to 24 hours just two months ago. The energy sector has been collapsing due to maintenance problems, war damage, equipment theft, corruption and a blockade of oil facilities by eastern factions, reported Reuters.

Another country that has electricity shortages at the moment is Lebanon, said Yelland.

Lebanon’s chronic electricity crisis is a subset of a broader economic crisis in the country that, according to the World Bank, is among the most severe economic crises globally since the mid-19th century in terms of impact on living standards.

This is due to broader economic issues such as fuel shortages as well as a “dysfunctional” energy sector, as reported in The New York Times. Although power cuts have long been a part of life in Lebanon, these problems have, over the past year, led to state-supplied power randomly coming on for only an hour or two per day at most.

Cuba is another nation that was already suffering from widespread power outages. In July this year, officials in Havana announced planned power cuts from August as the country’s energy crisis — driven by a lack of fuel and an ageing energy grid — worsens. The city had previously been spared daily outages of four or more hours that the rest of the country had endured for months, Reuters reported. The persistent power outages sparked protests in many parts of the country in July and August.

According to The Conversation, Nigeria’s power grid has collapsed more than 200 times in the past nine years, regularly resulting in widespread blackouts.

“Nigeria is an extreme example of a country with a failing public utility sector for electricity, with reasons that are completely different to South Africa,” said Yelland. The country has faced continuous blackouts this year, reportedly due to vandalism and theft of grid equipment, lack of funding, poorly trained personnel, deteriorating infrastructure and a general insufficient supply of electricity to support its population of 200 million people.

In Nigeria, virtually all businesses and many residents have had to make a plan. “Everyone has to have their own generators just to get by,” Yelland told Daily Maverick.

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Like Nigeria, Zimbabwe has a protracted and worsening power crisis caused by deteriorating equipment and a ballooning electricity import debt, reported the Sunday Times. Rolling blackouts in the country are sporadic and unplanned and, over the years, Zimbabwe’s ageing power plants have struggled to keep up with demand.

In 2019, Zimbabweans faced 18-hour daily power cuts rolled out by the state utility. Last week, Bloomberg reported that planned power cuts had intensified because of “depressed generation on the grid” after Harare was already experiencing outages of up to 10 hours a day.

An electricity market report by the International Energy Agency in January indicated that due to fuel shortages, power supply failed to meet demand which had skyrocketed after pandemic-induced lockdowns, leading to electricity supply disruptions in China and India in September and October last year.

“Industrial consumers faced rolling blackouts in several provinces and states in both countries,” the report read. While supply to residential consumers was prioritised in China, residents were affected in some regions.

In India, Punjab experienced rolling blackouts of up to nine hours at a time due to the shutdown of three power plants because of insufficient fuel supplies.

“The state of Rajasthan was forced to introduce load shedding for industrial and residential consumers even in urban areas like Jaipur and Jodhpur, with some remote areas undergoing up to 12 hours of supply disruption,” the report continued.

In April, Reuters reported that India was likely to continue experiencing widespread power cuts due to a coal shortage and soaring demand.

Heat upends energy supplies

China experienced another electricity crisis in July after an extreme global heatwave and drought pushed energy usage to its limit. Sichuan province, in southwestern China, was the worst affected after searing temperatures and protracted drought caused reservoirs to dry up — crippling the hydropower stations that account for nearly 80% of the province’s generation capacity, CNN reported.

Chinese officials imposed hardline restrictions on industrial power consumption in August, ordering factories in the country to cut back on electricity usage.

Political economist Prof Patrick Bond has suggested urgently implementing energy rationing in South Africa, arguing that corporations like South32 and Sasol’s Secunda operations be curtailed to get the power crisis under control, Daily Maverick reported.

Read more in Daily Maverick: “Presidency stays silent on Energy Action Plan while South Africans kept in the dark”

This year, extreme heat also saw parts of the US issue warnings to reduce electricity usage amid fears of rolling blackouts. Energy regulators in states including Texas, California and Michigan were reported to have appealed to residents to reduce their energy usage as soaring temperatures put pressure on the states’ grids.

CNN reported that power outages are on the rise in parts of the US, with extreme weather — made worse by the climate crisis — putting increased strain on electrical systems. The grid in Texas went down in 2021 during cold weather, leaving millions without power and, in August 2020, California was forced to enact power cuts amid a heatwave.

Europe’s rolling blackout warnings

Speaking to Daily Maverick, Yelland said that “for other countries, the situation is completely different. In the UK, the problem is related to the supply of gas on global markets — the same thing applies to many countries in Europe as a result of the Russia-Ukraine war.”

Read more in Daily Maverick: “Europe faces a grim winter as vengeful Putin turns off the gas”

Kosovo is the first country in Europe to impose rolling blackouts — which began in August — during this escalating global energy crisis. The country has been experiencing power outages every six hours, Bloomberg reported. As one of Europe’s poorest nations, Kosovo’s insufficient electricity production has been an issue for a long time — but now it can no longer afford to import electricity at all, due to high prices triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The UK is forecasting several days of rolling blackouts in January 2023 due to Russia’s war — depending on how electricity imports from the European mainland are affected, particularly from France and Norway. Cold weather this winter may also affect generating capacity.

Some European countries like France are considering planned power cuts for households this winter that could last several hours, as the country grapples with an ongoing energy crisis. To prevent this, the country’s power utility is urging households, businesses and local governments to lower energy consumption by up to 15%. Finland has also reportedly ramped up its warnings about possible outages. DM

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Crippling electricity shortages

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