Page 324 - Sustainable Cities and Communities Design Handbook

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and solar energy, respectively, to produce hot water, whereas 12.2% used
electricity (SM, 2011). SWH represents a cost-effective and clean way to
generate hot water for homes. In pursuit of its objective to reduce demand, the
government initiated an SWH program in 2008 to provide households with
generous subsidies to purchase SWH for their domestic hot water needs.
About 60,000 households, representing about 18% of the total households,
have already benefitted from this support scheme. It required more than USD
12 millions in terms of grants. Consequently, the SWH market has experienced
an average yearly growth of 40% over the past 5 years, such that the installed
solar thermal energy installed capacity has increased from 16.3 MW th in 2008
to 109.8 MW th in 2013 (Meister Consultants Group, 2015).
The growing interest in SWH illustrates the enormous potential of solar
thermal energy. The current installed capacity value of solar thermal in
Mauritius, which stands at 84.7 kW th per 1000 inhabitants (Meister Consultants
Group, 2015), is still low when compared with countries like Cyprus and
Austria where corresponding values of 542 and 406 kW th per 1000 inhabitants,
respectively, were reported in 2011 (Mauthner and Weiss, 2013). Although the
subsidies catalyzed the SWH market in Mauritius, several factors indicate that
solar thermal growth is sustainable even with limited financial incentives. First,
SWHs were mostly imported prior to the introduction of subsidies, but with the
increasing demand, many local companies started manufacturing SWHs. Scale
economies and enhanced competition among the growing number of local
manufacturers caused costs to drop. Consequently, SWH prices have dropped
by 30%e50% in the last 15 years. The simple payback period of SWH in
Mauritius is presently at 4.3 years (Meister Consultants Group, 2015). Second,
the subsidy scheme is aimed mainly at the low-income families. The ubiquity
of SWH following the success of the scheme has made them standard in new
house construction for medium-income and higher income families. Third,
commercial enterprises, particularly large-volume consumers, such as hotels,
are adopting SWH on a massive scale. Finally, an aggressive outreach and
awareness-raising campaign has helped the public understand the environmental
and financial benefits that can be derived from SWH. A survey conducted in
2011 revealed that more than half of the members of the 80.3% of total
households that were not equipped with SWH were interested in procuring
one (SM, 2011). Equipping these households with SWHs will increase the total
installed capacity to about 400 MW th , making the penetration rate comparable
to those of countries with mature SWH markets. All of these aspects underline
the potential of solar thermal to contribute to the energy transition in Mauritius.

Onshore and Offshore Wind
Although wind power generated in Mauritius is presently negligible, data from
the Mauritius Meteorological Services indicates good wind resources in many
regions, particularly in the eastern part of the island (MMS, 2015). In fact