Journey towards Renewable Energy for Sustainable Development at the Local Government Level: The Case of Hessequa Municipality in South Africa

The purpose of the research on which this article reports was to investigate how renewable energy forms part of the strategy of a local government, and to evaluate how participatory processes are utilised in the development and communication of this municipal strategy. The research was conducted with Hessequa Municipality, a local authority situated in the Western Cape Province of South Africa. A new aspect of the research was an attempt to consider renewable energy options as part of the municipal strategy, and not as a standalone project. Action research was undertaken and the resulting qualitative data were analysed using thematic analysis. Cognitive mapping was used to display the data and to analyse the causal relationships between different strategic themes. The causal relationships explicitly show that many opportunities for renewable energy solutions are evident in the form of: biomass-to-energy, low-carbon local economic development, small-scale embedded generation, waste-to-energy, and feed-in tariffs. The barriers for implementation are aging infrastructure and financial and legislative constraints. Participatory processes formed an integral part of the strategy formulation, and a unique visualised strategy was developed for communication with local citizens—a first for a local municipality in South Africa.