Energy Council of South Africa - South Africa can show the world how to implement a win-win energy transition
The energy transition should not be viewed as a threat to South Africa’s economic well-being, but rather a moment of significant technological disruption with enormous potential socio-economic upsides for our country. To reap the opportunities the energy transition is bringing, required reforms should be implemented by government in partnership with business. This partnership has the opportunity to unleash the required levels of investment, create jobs and put South Africa on a higher economic growth trajectory while mitigating the impact of climate change.
Key Findings/Recommendations: The author provided five recommendations that leverages the energy crisis in South Africa and enables national partnership to focus on delivery in 2024. These include;
- Eskom must continue to focus on progressing the power station turnaround plans to improve plant availability.
- Efficient access to and rapid expansion of the transmission grid, including urgently beginning to crowd in the skills, expertise and resources needed to prepare for and implement the Transmission Development Plan (TDP) 2022
- Significant increase in the scale of dispatchable power to support demand peaks and the system variability caused by renewable energy.
- Passing the Energy Regulation Amendment Bill which was introduced to Parliament in August 2023 will provide a strong signal to investors and the international community that South Africa is moving forward on sector reform
- Continue to unlock energy investment and job creation through efficiency drives that are cutting red tape, reducing transaction risk and coast and importantly focusing on bringing municipal utilities into the energy transition
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