South African businesses often feel frustrated: they have to bear the brunt of electricity outages and ongoing load shedding, but are powerless to do anything to help alleviate the crisis.
It’s true that we can’t get involved in building new power stations or wind farms – although we can go some way towards generating electricity through solar panels – but there’s a lot that can be done by just about everyone to reduce consumption.
And, perhaps surprisingly, changing to more efficient lighting can make a massive difference.
Thierry Boulanger, GM and vice-president at Philips Lighting Africa, points out that lighting may seem ubiquitous but people are quick to notice when it’s not working. And introducing electric lighting to communities that didn’t have it before makes a massive difference in people’s quality of living, he adds.