Second Ilanga Cup to become a 24-hour endurance race

The organisers of this year’s inaugural Ilanga Cup Solar Challenge say the event will be back next year, albeit in a somewhat different format. The 2023 edition will return to the Red Star Raceway, in Delmas, on July 5 and 6.
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Eskom debt plan in focus at South Africa’s mid-term budget

South Africa’s finance minister is expected to announce a plan to take on part of power utility Eskom’s mammoth debt in a mid-term budget on Wednesday, although analysts say the legally complex transfer will take time to execute. State-owned Eskom has been mired in financial crisis for years and has a roughly R400-billion in debt it cannot afford to service.
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Coal can ‘reinvent itself’, CGS must play role in the energy transition – Mantashe 

During his keynote address at the Council for Geoscience (CGS) Summit, held at the Durban International Convention Centre from October 25 to 27, Minerals and Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe expressed his belief that coal could “reinvent itself”, given sufficient investment. Mantashe cited the CGS’s lead role in the pilot carbon capture, utilisation and storage project in Leandra, Mpumalanga. The project, which is expected to become operational in early 2024, will test the feasibility of injecting between 10 000 t to 50 000 t of carbon dioxide a year, to a depth of at least 1 km. 
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Rand takes big hit as investors worry about Godongwana speech, Beijing developments

On Tuesday morning, the rand approached R18.50/$ – trading at levels last seen in early 2020 as the country digested the implications of the first hard Covid-19 lockdown. The currency is under pressure ahead of Wednesday’s medium-term budget speech announcement, and has also taken a knock as riskier assets digested political developments in China, the biggest single destination for South Africa’s exports.
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World is in its ‘first truly global energy crisis’ – IEA’s Birol

Tightening markets for liquefied natural gas (LNG) worldwide and major oil producers cutting supply have put the world in the middle of “the first truly global energy crisis”, the head of the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Tuesday. Rising imports of LNG to Europe amid the Ukraine crisis and a potential rebound in Chinese appetite for the fuel will tighten the market as only 20 billion cubic meters of new LNG capacity will come to market next year, IEA executive director Fatih Birol said during the Singapore International Energy Week.
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