Effects of decarbonization on the energy system and related employment effects in South Africa

The article evaluates pathways for the South African energy sector and investigates the employment development, focusing on job gains and losses. The article employs a linear bottom-up Global Energy System Model (GENeSYS-MOD) which minimizes the total costs in the power, heat, transport, and industry sectors on a provincial level. Further to that, the article uses the employment factor approach to add an employment analysis to the model thereby calculating the direct jobs in the energy sector. The two scenarios used are ‘the business as usual’ (BAU) which does not contain any climate constraints and the 2 °C scenario which considers a CO2 budget corresponding to a 2 °C pathway.

Key Findings/Recommendations: The analysis shows that by setting no carbon budget constraints in the BAU scenario, South Africa will not stay within a 2 °C compatible pathway. Nonetheless, PV and wind dominate the power generation in both scenarios, with higher shares in the 2 °C scenario. Furthermore, the model's results display that a power sector relying on 100% RES could be possible by 2045. With higher shares of RES, the power generation across the country decentralizes, leading to an increase in regional production and a more diverse energy mix. With regard to employment, the jobs in RES increases significantly in both scenarios. However, as a result of the sharper decline in coal demand, coal jobs decrease faster and to a greater extent in the 2 °C scenario. In the coal intensive province of Mpumalanga the number of newly created RES jobs is smaller than the jobs lost in the coal sector within the 2 °C scenario. Comprehensive plans for job-transfers, support mechanisms and restructuring are essential and require political will and diverse policies.

Read online: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1462901121001532