Nearly 28 million South African registered voters will go to the polls on 29 May to elect more than 800 representatives to the national assembly and provincial legislatures.
The leader of the party that secures a majority in the 400-member national assembly will become the country’s next president.
For the first time, independent candidates will be allowed to run, although all but 11 of the 14,889 certified candidates were nominated by 70 political parties.
The ruling African National Congress (ANC), which has been in office since the end of apartheid in 1994, retains the most support – despite dwindling fortunes.
Its closest challengers are the right-leaning Democratic Alliance (DA) and the left-leaning Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF).
A new party formed by former president Jacob Zuma, uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK), had been expected to also play a significant role in the election. However, South Africa’s top court has now ruled that due to the 15-month jail sentence he served, Zuma himself is ineligible to run.
South Africa – a country with more than 62 million people and considered the most industrialised economy in Africa – was the world’s 14th largest emitter of greenhouse gases in 2018. (See Carbon Brief’s South Africa profile for more.)
The country is gripped by a severe electricity crisis due to faltering and ageing coal power plants, which account for more than 80% of power generation.
Shortages have forced the government to implement electricity rationing, known as load shedding – helping drive a boom in rooftop solar for those that can afford it.
The ongoing crisis – and a failure to meet wider renewables goals – means coal plants will be kept running for longer and the country’s 2030 climate pledge will be missed.
In the interactive grid below, Carbon Brief tracks the commitments made by South Africa’s leading political party, the ANC, and its closest challengers, the DA and EFF, in their latest election manifestos. The grid covers a range of issues connected to climate change.
Each entry in the grid represents a direct quote from one or more of these documents.
Climate policy
South Africa is already experiencing the impact of climate change, including droughts, floods and an acute water crisis. However, climate change itself is not a key focus for South African voters; as of 2021, only about half of South Africans said they had heard of climate change.
Meanwhile, under the ANC, the South African government has strengthened its commitment to the Paris Agreement, by pledging to cut greenhouse gas emissions to between 350m tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (MtCO2e) and 420MtCO2e by 2030, from 442MtCO2e in 2020.
The country has also set the goal of net-zero emissions by 2050, although a presidential commission report suggested it would require up to 535bn rand ($29bn) per year to meet its climate targets. South Africa’s national climate plan also emphasises the importance of adaptation in the face of climate impacts.
In its manifesto for the 2024 election, the ANC reiterates its commitment to net-zero, adaptation and mitigation plans, plus pledges to continue to “work with other countries in the fight against climate change, global poverty and inequality in line with applicable international resolutions”.
The DA manifesto also says it is committed to “achieving net-zero carbon emissions to reduce the impact of energy generation on the climate”.
Within its manifesto, the EFF also pitches climate action, although it does not explicitly back the net-zero target. It says:
“The EFF government will reduce carbon emissions by 10% by 2029 and will renegotiate our nationally determined contribution (NDC), which includes components on climate adaptation and mitigation as well as support requirements for both.”
However, a professor of politics at the Wits School of Governance, David Everatt tells Carbon Brief most South African political parties have merely performed a “ritual nod towards climate change” in their manifestos, as climate concerns are not a major campaign issue in the country.
Instead, the focus is on reducing load-shedding and strengthening energy security.
Electricity policy
The revitalisation of South Africa’s power sector is undoubtedly one of the major focuses of the coming election.
“The vast majority of the debate in South Africa is about the power sector and load-shedding,” says Dr Tracy Ledger, head of the energy transition programme at PARI, an African research institute affiliated to the University of Johannesburg and Wits University in South Africa. She tells Carbon Brief:
“Load shedding has ruined people’s lives and devastated the economy; the economy is probably 20% smaller than it would be without load shedding; hundreds of thousands of jobs have been lost. It’s been a disaster.”
During COP26 in Glasgow, South Africa, alongside France, Germany, the UK, US and the European Union, announced a Just Energy Transition Partnership. This is designed to mobilise an initial $8.5bn to support South Africa “to move away from coal and to accelerate its transition to a low emission, climate resilient economy”.
However, South Africa’s worsening electricity crisis has raised concerns that it may struggle to fulfil its climate ambitions. In April 2023, president Cyril Ramaphosa said the government will consider a delay in the decommissioning of coal plants to help ease electricity cuts.
Another concern is the potential job losses associated with coal decommissioning in Mpumalanga province, an area known as South Africa’s coal belt.
In their 2024 election manifestos, the ANC and the DA do not mention coal, instead pledging investments in renewable energy. However, the EFF says that it would “establish a state-owned mining company to manage coal mines owned by Eskom (South Africa’s state-run power utility), ensuring a quality coal supply at affordable prices”.
Dr Ledger tells Carbon Brief:
“The DA is very much in favour of the just energy transition. The official line of the ANC is that they support the energy transition, but the ANC is in so many factions, and there are a lot of factions within the ANC that are anti-energy transition.
“The EFF is trying to keep everyone happy at the same time. They are saying we need security of supply and we need to address climate change, but we can’t close any coal-fired power stations because people will lose their jobs.”
Meanwhile, despite the continued support for coal in South Africa, particularly in Mpumalanga province, the ANC, DA and EFF all acknowledge the importance of renewable energy in their manifestos.
Dr Ledger believes that regardless of the rhetoric around coal, renewables have a place in South Africa’s energy mix:
“There is now so much embedded [renewable] generation making up the deficit [in supplies from the central grid]. The coal plants will eventually have to shut down. We can’t afford a nuclear power plant and the treasury will never approve it. So, the only practical option available is the private sector and renewables. The energy transition is kind of happening by stealth.
“Electricity generation in South Africa is being privatised and what the private sector is interested in is renewables and maybe a little bit of gas. But gas can’t compete on price with solar. Nothing can compete with solar. Solar in South Africa is already 30% cheaper than the power being produced by Eskom from its coal-fired power stations. And in ten years time, it will be 70% cheaper. That’s what is going to drive the energy transition in South Africa.”
Water policy
Alongside the power crisis, South Africa is also suffering a water crisis, as droughts become increasingly common. In March, thousands lined up for water in the country’s largest city, Johannesburg.
Record temperatures have exacerbated the problem, but the issue has also been politicised with the DA, for example, blaming the ANC for mismanaging the country’s water resources.
Meanwhile, sewage systems are leaking and polluting the country’s freshwater supply, further complicating the matter.
According to Prof Richard Meissner, a water governance expert at the University of South Africa, water-related issues are set to play a more significant role in the 2024 election than in previous years. He tells Carbon Brief:
“It’s important to note that South Africans use 61.8% more water than the global average, which is 173 litres per day. This is largely due to issues such as leaks, wastage and illegal connections, which can be addressed through proper infrastructure maintenance.”
He adds that political parties have also focused on water security in their manifestos, proposing specific solutions to improve water and sanitation services.
For example, the ANC promises it will allocate more powers to the national and provincial government to provide clean water to citizens. The EFF has a similar solution – prioritising government intervention.
The DA, on the other hand, wants to involve “private companies in water infrastructure projects through a performance-based private-public partnership model”.
The post South Africa election 2024: What the manifestos say on energy and climate appeared first on Carbon Brief.
South Africa election 2024: What the manifestos say on energy and climate
Drought and heatwaves occurring together – known as “compound” events – have “surged” across the world since the early 2000s, a new study shows.
Compound drought and heat events (CDHEs) can have devastating effects, creating the ideal conditions for intense wildfires, such as Australia’s “Black Summer” of 2019-20 where bushfires burned 24m hectares and killed 33 people.
The research, published in Science Advances, finds that the increase in CDHEs is predominantly being driven by events that start with a heatwave.
The global area affected by such “heatwave-led” compound events has more than doubled between 1980-2001 and 2002-23, the study says.
The rapid increase in these events over the last 23 years cannot be explained solely by global warming, the authors note.
Since the late 1990s, feedbacks between the land and the atmosphere have become stronger, making heatwaves more likely to trigger drought conditions, they explain.
One of the study authors tells Carbon Brief that societies must pay greater attention to compound events, which can “cause severe impacts on ecosystems, agriculture and society”.
Compound events
CDHEs are extreme weather events where drought and heatwave conditions occur simultaneously – or shortly after each other – in the same region.
These events are often triggered by large-scale weather patterns, such as “blocking” highs, which can produce “prolonged” hot and dry conditions, according to the study.
Prof Sang-Wook Yeh is one of the study authors and a professor at the Ewha Womans University in South Korea. He tells Carbon Brief:
“When heatwaves and droughts occur together, the two hazards reinforce each other through land-atmosphere interactions. This amplifies surface heating and soil moisture deficits, making compound events more intense and damaging than single hazards.”
CDHEs can begin with either a heatwave or a drought.
The sequence of these extremes is important, the study says, as they have different drivers and impacts.
For example, in a CDHE where the heatwave was the precursor, increased direct sunshine causes more moisture loss from soils and plants, leading to a drought.
Conversely, in an event where the drought was the precursor, the lack of soil moisture means that less of the sun’s energy goes into evaporation and more goes into warming the Earth’s surface. This produces favourable conditions for heatwaves.
The study shows that the majority of CDHEs globally start out as a drought.
In recent years, there has been increasing focus on these events due to the devastating impact they have on agriculture, ecosystems and public health.
In Russia in the summer of 2010, a compound drought-heatwave event – and the associated wildfires – caused the death of nearly 55,000 people, the study notes.
The record-breaking Pacific north-west “heat dome” in 2021 triggered extreme drought conditions that caused “significant declines” in wheat yields, as well as in barley, canola and fruit production in British Columbia and Alberta, Canada, says the study.
Increasing events
To assess how CDHEs are changing, the researchers use daily reanalysis data to identify droughts and heatwaves events. (Reanalysis data combines past observations with climate models to create a historical climate record.) Then, using an algorithm, they analyse how these events overlap in both time and space.
The study covers the period from 1980 to 2023 and the world’s land surface, excluding polar regions where CDHEs are rare.
The research finds that the area of land affected by CDHEs has “increased substantially” since the early 2000s.
Heatwave-led events have been the main contributor to this increase, the study says, with their spatial extent rising 110% between 1980-2001 and 2002-23, compared to a 59% increase for drought-led events.
The map below shows the global distribution of CDHEs over 1980-2023. The charts show the percentage of the land surface affected by a heatwave-led CDHE (red) or a drought-led CDHE (yellow) in a given year (left) and relative increase in each CDHE type (right).
The study finds that CDHEs have occurred most frequently in northern South America, the southern US, eastern Europe, central Africa and south Asia.
Threshold passed
The authors explain that the increase in heatwave-led CDHEs is related to rising global temperatures, but that this does not tell the whole story.
In the earlier 22-year period of 1980-2001, the study finds that the spatial extent of heatwave-led CDHEs rises by 1.6% per 1C of global temperature rise. For the more-recent period of 2022-23, this increases “nearly eightfold” to 13.1%.
The change suggests that the rapid increase in the heatwave-led CDHEs occurred after the global average temperature “surpasse[d] a certain temperature threshold”, the paper says.
This threshold is an absolute global average temperature of 14.3C, the authors estimate (based on an 11-year average), which the world passed around the year 2000.
Investigating the recent surge in heatwave-leading CDHEs further, the researchers find a “regime shift” in land-atmosphere dynamics “toward a persistently intensified state after the late 1990s”.
In other words, the way that drier soils drive higher surface temperatures, and vice versa, is becoming stronger, resulting in more heatwave-led compound events.
Daily data
The research has some advantages over other previous studies, Yeh says. For instance, the new work uses daily estimations of CDHEs, compared to monthly data used in past research. This is “important for capturing the detailed occurrence” of these events, says Yeh.
He adds that another advantage of their study is that it distinguishes the sequence of droughts and heatwaves, which allows them to “better understand the differences” in the characteristics of CDHEs.
Dr Meryem Tanarhte is a climate scientist at the University Hassan II in Morocco, and Dr Ruth Cerezo Mota is a climatologist and a researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Both scientists, who were not involved in the study, agree that the daily estimations give a clearer picture of how CDHEs are changing.
Cerezo-Mota adds that another major contribution of the study is its global focus. She tells Carbon Brief that in some regions, such as Mexico and Africa, there is a lack of studies on CDHEs:
“Not because the events do not occur, but perhaps because [these regions] do not have all the data or the expertise to do so.”
However, she notes that the reanalysis data used by the study does have limitations with how it represents rainfall in some parts of the world.
Compound impacts
The study notes that if CDHEs continue to intensify – particularly events where heatwaves are the precursors – they could drive declining crop productivity, increased wildfire frequency and severe public health crises.
These impacts could be “much more rapid and severe as global warming continues”, Yeh tells Carbon Brief.
Tanarhte notes that these events can be forecasted up to 10 days ahead in many regions. Furthermore, she says, the strongest impacts can be prevented “through preparedness and adaptation”, including through “water management for agriculture, heatwave mitigation measures and wildfire mitigation”.
The study recommends reassessing current risk management strategies for these compound events. It also suggests incorporating the sequences of drought and heatwaves into compound event analysis frameworks “to enhance climate risk management”.
Cerezo-Mota says that it is clear that the world needs to be prepared for the increased occurrence of these events. She tells Carbon Brief:
“These [risk assessments and strategies] need to be carried out at the local level to understand the complexities of each region.”
The post Heatwaves driving recent ‘surge’ in compound drought and heat extremes appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Heatwaves driving recent ‘surge’ in compound drought and heat extremes
Greenhouse Gases
DeBriefed 6 March 2026: Iran energy crisis | China climate plan | Bristol’s ‘pioneering’ wind turbine
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
Energy crisis
ENERGY SPIKE: US-Israeli attacks on Iran and subsequent counterattacks across the Middle East have sent energy prices “soaring”, according to Reuters. The newswire reported that the region “accounts for just under a third of global oil production and almost a fifth of gas”. The Guardian noted that shipping traffic through the strait of Hormuz, which normally ferries 20% of the world’s oil, “all but ground to a halt”. The Financial Times reported that attacks by Iran on Middle East energy facilities – notably in Qatar – triggered the “biggest rise in gas prices since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine”.
‘RISK’ AND ‘BENEFITS’: Bloomberg reported on increases in diesel prices in Europe and the US, speculating that rising fuel costs could be “a risk for president Donald Trump”. US gas producers are “poised to benefit from the big disruption in global supply”, according to CNBC. Indian government sources told the Economic Times that Russia is prepared to “fulfil India’s energy demands”. China Daily quoted experts who said “China’s energy security remains fundamentally unshaken”, thanks to “emergency stockpiles and a wide array of import channels”.
‘ESSENTIAL’ RENEWABLES: Energy analysts said governments should cut their fossil-fuel reliance by investing in renewables, “rather than just seeking non-Gulf oil and gas suppliers”, reported Climate Home News. This message was echoed by UK business secretary Peter Kyle, who said “doubling down on renewables” was “essential” amid “regional instability”, according to the Daily Telegraph.
China’s climate plan
PEAK COAL?: China has set out its next “five-year plan” at the annual “two sessions” meeting of the National People’s Congress, including its climate strategy out to 2030, according to the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post. The plan called for China to cut its carbon emissions per unit of gross domestic product (GDP) by 17% from 2026 to 2030, which “may allow for continued increase in emissions given the rate of GDP growth”, reported Reuters. The newswire added that the plan also had targets to reach peak coal in the next five years and replace 30m tonnes per year of coal with renewables.
ACTIVE YET PRUDENT: Bloomberg described the new plan as “cautious”, stating that it “frustrat[es] hopes for tighter policy that would drive the nation to peak carbon emissions well before president Xi Jinping’s 2030 deadline”. Carbon Brief has just published an in-depth analysis of the plan. China Daily reported that the strategy “highlights measures to promote the climate targets of peaking carbon dioxide emissions before 2030”, which China said it would work towards “actively yet prudently”.
Around the world
- EU RULES: The European Commission has proposed new “made in Europe” rules to support domestic low-carbon industries, “against fierce competition from China”, reported Agence France-Presse. Carbon Brief examined what it means for climate efforts.
- RECORD HEAT: The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has said there is a 50-60% chance that the El Niño weather pattern could return this year, amplifying the effect of global warming and potentially driving temperatures to “record highs”, according to Euronews.
- FLAGSHIP FUND: The African Development Bank’s “flagship clean energy fund” plans to more than double its financing to $2.5bn for African renewables over the next two years, reported the Associated Press.
- NO WITHDRAWAL: Vanuatu has defied US efforts to force the Pacific-island nation to drop a UN draft resolution calling on the world to implement a landmark International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling on climate, according to the Guardian.
98
The number of nations that submitted their national reports on tackling nature loss to the UN on time – just half of the 196 countries that are part of the UN biodiversity treaty – according to analysis by Carbon Brief.