eBusiness Weekly
Michael Tome
Energy and Power Development Minister, Joram Gumbo says the Solar Thermal Technology Roadmap and Implementation Plan has potential to aid government’s vision of installing 250 000 solar geysers by 2030.
Solar Thermal Technology Roadmap and Implementation Plan (STTRIP) is a collaborative effort between the government, SOLTRAIN and other stakeholders to save electricity and promote the use of non-toxic and renewable energy.
This roadmap will help Government achieve its target of saving electricity which can then be channeled to other productive sectors of the economy.
Minister Gumbo highlighted that his ministry was weighing if it could design laws that do away with the use of electric geysers as they are known heavy consumers of electricity. He pointed that renewable energy was a good alternative considering that it was sustainable and cheap in the long run hence driving installation of 250 000 solar geysers by 2030.
“Going forward my Ministry is considering formulating a legislative framework that outlaws the use of electric geysers in households and other institutional buildings.
“This may help the ministry to achieve its intended target of installing 250 000 solar geysers by 2030 as indicated in the draft Renewable Energy Policy.
“Surely the choice is ours either to continue paying huge electricity bills at the same time polluting the environment or adopt solar water heaters to reduce operational costs and save the environment,” said Minister Gumbo.
Currently there is a gap between demand and supply of energy in the country and this deficit is detrimental to the achievement Zimbabwe‘s vision of making the country an upper middle –income by 2030.
As the country pushes towards the cleaner sources of energy there is need to decarbonize the energy supply by adopting renewable sources of energy which include solar thermal energy
Zimbabwe’s energy supply is dominated by fossil fuel energies that are environmentally unsustainable with the attendant global warning and climate change effects.
