By MAIMBOLWA MULIKELELA –

THE Policy Monitoring and Research Centre (PMRC) has urged the Government to scale up investments in non-hydro power sources in view of Zesco’s frequent load-shedding.
PMRC executive director Bernadette Deka said the Government should scale up investment in the renewable energy technologies to help cushion the impact of loading shedding.
Ms Deka said in Lusaka that the Government should create incentives for private sector’s participation in renewable energy technologies especially in the rural areas.
“Efforts should be targeted towards public private partnerships particularly in the financing of renewable energy projects.
Tax incentives for local contractors procuring renewable energy technologies into the countries need to be put in place to promote investments even at micro level and create employment,” Ms Deka said.
She said her organisation recognises that there has been insufficient incentives for private sector investments in the energy sector due to lack of renewable energy feed-in-tariff and prevailing non cost reflective electricity tariffs.
Ms Deka said due to the unattractive tariffs, the Zambian electricity sector was largely dominated by Zesco.
She further appealed to the Government to establish feed-in tariffs as a policy tool for encouraging development of renewable energy technologies.
Feed-in tariffs thus, essentially subsidises renewable energy generation to make them cost-competitive.
“Using well designed policies and stronger institutions can encourage renewable energy producers to sell their products to the national grid, provided the revenue collected covers the cost and interest payments,” she said.
PMRC recommends that the Government urgently develop a renewable energy plan that will guide the development and implementation of renewable energy sources so as to provide a rich energy mix for Zambia.
She, therefore, said it was inevitable that in order to sustain business and support economic growth, the Government through Zesco should urgently expedite and strengthen infrastructure capacity in generation, transmission and distribution of energy.