Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan reports that Eskom will seek the exemptions it requires to immediately buy up to 1 600 MW of surplus electricity generation that it believes could be available immediately from existing independent power producers (IPPs) and those private South African businesses with their own generation capacity. He also announced that a further 100 MW to 200 MW could be purchased in the short-term from Botswana and Zambia through the Southern African Power Pool, while a further 150 MW of gas-fired electricity could be purchased from Mozambique.
Mineral Resources and Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe reported that the bid submission deadline for Bid Window Six (BW6) of the Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme would be delayed by between 45 and 60 days to ensure procedural fairness in light of President Cyril Ramaphosa’s announcement that the size of the round would be doubled from 2 600 MW to 5 200 MW. The bid submission date for BW 6 was initially set down for August 11, after the request for proposals (RFP) documentation was published on April 6.
Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa will visit Mozambique and Zambia in a bid to save the country’s electricity import contracts that are being eyed by Eskom. Mnangagwa’s trips come at a time when South Africa, which is undergoing an electricity crisis, seeks to replace Zimbabwe as an importer of electricity from Mozambique and Zambia.
Renewable energy company EIMS Africa has successfully acquired Renewable Energy Empowerment Management Services (Reesco) – a key step in the company’s expansion plans as it anticipates increasing its generation capacity to about 1 500 MW by late 2022.
EIMS Africa’s current renewable energy portfolio comprises 13 utility-scale projects with a combined generation capacity of over 850 MW, including the 50 MW De Wildt solar farm in the North West province.
Africa deserves the highest priority attention at the upcoming twenty-seventh United Nations’ climate conference – the Conference of the Parties 27 (COP 27), to be held in Egypt, in November, panel members said in a discussion of the the African Development Bank’s (AfDB’s) African Economic Outlook 2022 report during an event hosted by the Atlantic Council on July 27.
A team from the AfDB, led by acting chief economist and VP Kevin Urama, is in Washington DC, in the US, to present the African Economic Outlook 2022 – a flagship publication of the bank – to international thought leaders and other targeted bodies.
State-owned utility Eskom met with CEOs and leadership from over 70 private institutions in a session led by the JSE and business organisation Business Leadership South Africa (BLSA) on July 29, as part of ongoing efforts to resolve the long-running electricity crisis. “The purpose of the discussions was to identify initiatives where the parties can collaborate and plant the seeds of opportunity to leverage private sector investment capacity and harvest the low hanging fruit in the electricity industry,” group CE André de Ruyter said.
Nedbank Group wants to almost double its lending to green energy projects in South Africa over the next two years as it seeks to cement its position as a market leader in funding renewable power projects. The bank’s lending toward the government’s Renewable Independent Power Producer Programme – aimed at boosting privately generated electricity in the nation – may jump to about R50-billion n the “short-to-medium term” from 29 billion rand, said CEO Mike Brown.
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