Zesco’s  Renewable Energy Initiatives And Environmental Compliance For Public Benefit

In view of the power deficit forecasted in the early 2000, ZESCO had put in place a business strategy that ensures sustainability of power supply, the business and the environment. These strategies included the rehabilitation and upgrading of the existing hydro power plants, building of new power plants and associated transmission lines, and demand side management.

The power rehabilitation project will increase generation capacity by 210 MW once the last unit at Kariba North bank is completed by mid-2012. As at now this project has already increased generation capacity by 180MW (i.e. 90 MW at Kafue Gorge Power Station and another 90 MW at Kariba North Bank Power Station) and has helped to mitigate loadshedding. In line with the provisions of the Environmental Protection and Pollution Control Act of 1990, ZESCO established the Environment and Social Affairs Unit to ensure that the power utility undertakes power rehabilitation project (PRP) and other power system projects in compliance with the provisions of the law. To this effect, ZESCO also formulated an environmental policy in 2000 in order to align its activities with the law.
All ZESCO’s projects are preceded with an Environment Impact Assessment which is approved by the Zambia Environmental Management Agency (Former Environmental Council of Zambia). The corporation’s business activities therefore are all done within acceptable environmental practices and are in line with the corporate business strategy.

Building Of Power Plants

In line with its business strategy, ZESCO planned to build several power plants at Kariba North Bank (extending the existing power station to increase capacity by 360 MW), at Itezhi Tezhi (new power station that will bring on board 120 MW) and at Kafue Gorge (i.e. the Kafue Gorge Lower
Hydro project that will add another 750 MW). The corporation has also planned to upgrade mini-hydro power stations at Lusiwasi (Central Province) where generation capacity will be increased from 12 MW to 86 MW and at Lunzua (Northern Province) where generation capacity will be increased from 0.7 MW to 14.4 MW. All these projects are aimed at ensuring adequate, reliable and secure power supply for environmentally sustainable development.
However, such investments aimed at expanding infrastructure to resolve power deficit, though desirable has a propensity to push up tariffs in the medium to long term. This is due to the fact that these investments require tariffs to be set at a level that generates sufficient revenues to pay back loans procured for system expansion. So far ZESCO is to contribute a total of US$ 830 Million towards the total cost of more than US$ 3.47 Billion required for new generation projects in the country (inclusive of projects being undertaken by Independent Power Producers).
Aspects of affordability of building new power plants are therefore taxing to both the company and country at large hence the suplimentary efforts to implement energy efficiency initiatives and Demand Side management Strategies (DSM).