South Africa’s energy transition is likely to accelerate after voters forced the ruling African National Congress (ANC) into a power-sharing arrangement for the first time, analysts say.
On Sunday President Cyril Ramaphosa appointed ministers from his ANC party and the pro-business opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) to serve in his “government of national unity”.
In one of the most significant changes, Ramaphosa took away pro-coal minister Gwede Mantashe’s control of the energy sector. Hilton Trollip, a Cape Town University energy researcher, told Climate Home that Mantashe had previously “paralysed” the government’s renewables programme.
The Department of Mineral Resources and Energy has now been split in two. Mantashe is only keeping control of mining and hydrocarbons, while the ANC’s Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, previously the electricity minister, will now be in charge of setting energy policy with a wider mandate.
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Trollip said it was unclear if Ramokgopa would boost renewables as he has not held much power until now. But there is now a better chance that Mantashe’s highly contentious Integrated Resource Plan – which envisages a slowdown in renewable energy investments and a switch to gas-fired power – will be revised, he added.
DA’s Dion George is the new environment minister replacing Barbara Creecy, who has been moved to transport.
Creecy played an active role in several COP climate talks, most importantly successfully proposing a global goal on adaptation at COP26 in 2021.
JETP talks
Owing to its heavy reliance on coal for electricity, the country is Africa’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases.
That made it a prime candidate for a world-first funding agreement, backed by wealthy nations, aimed at ramping up investments in clean energy while also protecting those reliant on the fossil fuel sector.
But two and a half years after it was announced, the now $9.3 billion “Just Energy Transition Partnership” (JETP) has made little tangible progress on the ground.
Meanwhile, as the country grapples with rolling blackouts, state-owned utility Eskom has announced plans to delay the decommissioning of at least three of its coal-fired power plants by several years – raising the risk that funding partners will walk back on their offers.
A general view of Kendal Power Station, a coal-fired station of South African utility Eskom, in the Mpumalanga province. REUTERS/Siphiwe Sibeko
Kevin Mileham, the DA’s shadow minister of mineral resources and energy, told Climate Home that South Africa’s JETP “will need to be accelerated” as the country is currently not on track to meet global climate goals.
The party wants to see “a rapid roll out” of the programme which will require improved dialogue with the wealthy European and North American countries funding part of it, he added.
It also wants to advance the implementation of a climate change adaptation strategy and believes South Africa needs to do a better job at tracking and reporting its efforts to reduce carbon emissions, Mileham said.
Much of the progress will hinge on the government’s ability to form a united front on foreign policy and forge an effective relationship with the international funding partners.
The ANC and DA have regularly clashed on international affairs, such as the country’s support to Palestine.
They will need to “reconcile their differences [on foreign policy] and come to a shared understanding on international multilateral processes,” says Happy Khambule, energy and environment policy director at Business Unity South Africa, a business lobby group.
Tensions over private sector role
He added that private companies, which will have a significant role in the transition, want to see policy certainty enhanced in the months ahead.
The group is awaiting the finalisation of the Electricity Regulation Amendment Bill, which promises to open up the electricity market and put an end to Eskom’s longstanding monopoly, and the Integrated Resource Plan.
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Meanwhile, the DA’s preference for greater private sector involvement in the energy transition could create fresh tensions with key stakeholders. Left-wing adversaries often deridingly label the DA a “neoliberal” party.
The country’s largest trade union group COSATU wants the newly separated energy department to “stop the privatisation of electricity and energy”, and instead promote state and social ownership models.
“We don’t expect major shifts with regards to the just transition, but rather a more focused approach on its implementation, in particular to make sure workers and communities and value chains are not left behind,” a spokesperson for the organisation told Climate Home.
The just transition should be overseen by multiple government departments given “the triple crisis” of unemployment, climate change and energy shortages, they added, suggesting that, for example, the finance ministry should raise spending on climate-focused public employment schemes.
(Reporting by Nick Hedley, editing by Joe Lo and Matteo Civillini)
The post New South African government fuels optimism for faster energy transition appeared first on Climate Home News.
New South African government fuels optimism for faster energy transition
I fell flat on my backside one afternoon this January and, weirdly, it made me think of you. Okay, I know that takes a bit of unpacking—so let me go back and start at the beginning.
For the last six years, our family has joined with half a dozen others to spend a week or so up at Wangat Lodge, located on a 50-acre subtropical rainforest property around three hours north of Sydney. The accommodation is pretty basic, with no wifi coverage—so time in Wangat really revolves around the bush. You live by the rhythm of the sun and the rain, with the days punctuated by swimming in the river and walking through the forest.
An intrinsic part of Wangat is Dan, the owner and custodian of the place, and the guide on our walks. He talks about time, place, and care with great enthusiasm, but always tenderly and never with sanctimony. “There is no such thing as ‘the same walk’”, is one of Dan’s refrains, because the way he sees it “every day, there is change in the world around you” of plants, animals, water and weather. Dan speaks of Wangat with such evident love, but not covetousness; it is a lightness which includes gentle consciousness that his own obligations arise only because of the historic dispossession of others. He inspires because of how he is.
One of the highlights this year was a river walk with Dan, during which we paddled or waded through most of the route, with only occasional scrambles up the bank. Sometimes the only sensible option is to swim. Among the life around us, we notice large numbers of tadpoles in the water, which is clean enough to drink. Our own tadpoles, the kids in the group, delight in the expedition. I overhear one of the youngest children declaring that she’s having ‘one of the best days ever’. Dan looks content. Part of his mission is to reintroduce children to nature, so that the soles of their feet may learn from the uneven ground, and their muscles from the cool of the water.
These moments are for thankfulness in the life that lives.
It is at the very end of the walk when I overbalance and fall on my arse—and am reminded of the eternal truth that rocks are hard. As I gingerly get up, my youngest daughter looks at me, caught between amusement and concern, and asks me if I’m okay.
I have to think before answering, because yes, physically I’m fine. But I feel too, an underlying sense of discomfort; it is that omnipresent pressure of existential awareness about the scale of suffering and ecological damage now at large in the world, made so much more immediately acute after Bondi; the dissonance that such horrors can somehow exist simultaneously with this small group being alive and happy in this place, on this earth-kissed afternoon.
How is it okay, to be “okay”? What is it to live with conscience in Wangat? Those of us who still have access to time, space, safety and high levels of volition on this planet carry this duality all the time, as our gift and obligation. It is not an easy thing to make sense of; but for me, it speaks to the question of ‘why Greenpeace’? Because the moral and strategic mission-focus of campaigning provides a principled basis for how each of us can bridge that interminable gulf.
The essence of campaigning is to make the world’s state of crisis legible and actionable, by isolating systemic threats to which we can rise and respond credibly, with resources allocated to activity in accordance with strategy. To be part of Greenpeace, whether as an activist, volunteer supporter or staff member, is to find a home for your worries for the world in confidence and faith that together we have the power to do something about it. Together we meet the confusion of the moment with the light of shared purpose and the confidence of direction.
So, it was as I was getting back up again from my tumble and considering my daughter’s question that I thought of you—with gratitude, and with love–-because we cross this bridge all the time, together, everyday; to face the present and the future.
‘Yes, my love’, I say to my daughter, smiling as I get to my feet, “I’m okay”. And I close my eyes and think of a world in which the fires are out, and everywhere, all tadpoles have the conditions of flourishing to be able to grow peacefully into frogs.
Thank you for being a part of Greenpeace.
With love,
David
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