Author :

Stephanie Townsend

Pages :

6

Product Type :

Case

Reference # :

WBS-2008-6

Teaching Note :

Institute:

Wits Business School

Setting:

Article for Business Day

Year:

2008

Keywords:

Sustainable business, environment of business, business and the environment.

Summary/Abstract:

In May 2008, Johannesburg’s Sandton City shopping complex was on the road to recovery from its experience that January, when it was hit hardest of all shopping centres in the country by Eskom’s random power cuts. Sandton City general manager, Gary Vipond, and Dorcas Ledwaba, the director of property management at Liberty Life Properties, which owns the complex, had managed to find ways of saving electricity, and had put a solution in place involving generators and inverters. Planned power cuts had taken place for a short period in April, but Eskom had sinced announced that it would cease planned power cuts and would try to provide continuous power. Yet the two knew that the electricity situation was still critical. They wondered whether the short-term solutions they had implemented would serve the shopping complex effectively until 2014, when Eskom envisaged being on track again.