This section raises several issues about the indicators, and how they are used for a country such as South Africa. Changes to how the indicators are measured, or which indicators are used, could improve the quality of reporting - and also reduce the time required to produce the reports.

1. Access to affordable energy

While indicator 3, access to electricity, is one important indicator of the social equity side of energy systems - and a relatively easy one to measure - it does not really tell us whether people can afford the energy to which they have access. Research in South Africa suggests that many electrified households still do not use electricity - and may even use traditional, highly polluting fuels - because they can not afford to pay for the electricity (Mehlwana 1998; Thom 2000). There are also a variety of social and cultural reasons why people may still choose to use non-electric fuels (Mehlwana 1999c). Of course, simply tracking the price of energy is not the answer, because we are concerned about services (eg home heating, cooking, hot water) rather than energy use and prices, per se. Perhaps an additional measure could be 'the cost of cooking a meal for the poor', which would reflect not just energy costs but the efficiency of the appliances and fuels available to households. We recognise that the data for this will be hard to find for many countries, but there is a substantial information on cooking stove efficiency and often data on the share of households that use particular appliances. It might be possible to make some estimates at least that would provide a valuable social metric.