Spain’s Grupo Cobra and SENER companies are seeking to exit their stake in the 100 MW Ilanga solar power plant, which supplies electricity to South Africa’s national grid, two sources with knowledge of the process told Reuters. Grupo Solar and SENER have hired bankers for the transaction, the sources said, in line with their strategies to exit minority stakes in up and running assets.
Grid constraints in South Africa’s high-yield renewable-energy areas need to be addressed urgently, Independent Power Producer (IPP) Office CEO Bernard Magoro has again warned. Reflecting on the lessons learned from the most recent renewables procurement round during a Power Futures Lab webinar, Magoro said that government had been unable to procure several extremely competitively priced projects during bid window five (BW5) because of an absence of grid capacity.
Wind and solar power consortium Ikamva will build 12 new wind and solar projects with a combined capacity of 1.27 GW have won preferred bidder status in Bid Window (BW) 5 of South Africa’s Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme (REIPPPP). The 12 projects, across onshore wind and solar, will generate enough clean energy to power a third of the yearly electricity demand of the City of Cape Town, and represent half of the total allocation in the BW, which was the most competitive to date and was almost four-times oversubscribed, wind and solar power multinational Mainstream Renewable Power says.
Eskom CEO Andrè de Ruyter describes the $8.5-billion (R131-billion) financing package announced at COP26 as “an important first step” in light of the fact that South Africa’s energy transition is expected to require investments of between $30- and $35-billion over the coming 15 years. He says that funding – pledged as part of a political agreement concluded with France, Germany, the UK, the US and the European Union – will support a socially and economically just energy transition in South Africa, while enabling the country to meet its new Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) targets.
Hydrogen can provide the lowest-cost decarbonisation solution for over a fifth of final energy demand by mid-century – contributing a cumulative reduction of 80 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2), the Hydrogen Council’s CEO Coalition has told delegates attending COP26, in Glasgow. To achieve that target, the coalition recommends strong public-private collaboration.
Development finance institution (DFI) the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA) says it will play an active role and provide finance for a just transition that achieves net-zero greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions by 2050.