Archive for date: October 12th, 2022

Clean energy is set to be a major contributor to a global and sustainable energy system and wind energy is becoming one of the lowest-cost sources of clean energy, Mineral Resources and Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe said during the eleventh Windaba Conference, in Cape Town, on October 12. He noted that the conference was being held at a time when South Africa was experiencing frequent loadshedding owing to challenges with the performance of its existing coal-fired power generation plants.

Department of Mineral Resources and Energy (DMRE) director-general Jacob Mbele has given his department’s conception of what a just energy transition would look like. He was responding to a question during a panel discussion at the Windaba 2022 conference, on Wednesday morning, in Cape Town. The energy transition refers to the global move away from high carbon-emitting energy sources to low- or even zero-carbon emitting energy sources. “For us, as the DMRE, we’re responsible for the security of energy supply,” he pointed out. “So, a just transition for us is a transition in which there is a secure energy supply, and that energy supply is sustainable [including regarding the environment and climate change], that energy supply is affordable, [and] reliable. Those for me are the key parts of what would be just.”

Mineral Resources and Energy Department director-general Jacob Mbele has warned that supporters of renewable energy could actually undermine the sector in South Africa. He was participating in a panel discussion at the Windaba 2022 wind-power conference, in Cape Town, on Wednesday morning. “The renewable energy sector must avoid overpromising and underdelivering,” he cautioned. The industry had to keep a careful eye on those who, in their enthusiasm for renewable energy, exaggerated its capabilities. Such exaggeration did more harm than good, and when “reality hits”, critics of renewables would claim that they didn’t work.