Africa can benefit massively from seizing opportunities presented by the global green revolution, including by leapfrogging existing technologies, but this will not happen spontaneously and will require green industrial policy to facilitate developments, German Development Institute sustainable economic and social development head of department Dr Tilman Altenburg said this week. The complexities of the current global clean energy revolution – compared with earlier industrial revolutions that centred on a technology or a related set of technologies – make the planning and sequencing of changing industries and economies to use renewable energy difficult, as the clean energy revolution is expected to impact on a significant range of industries, as well as on mobility, social and economic activities, he stated.
The acting group executive for generation at Eskom, Rhulani Mathebula, is leaving the utility with immediate effect. This is the second change to the position in almost six months.
South Africa had an indigenous design for a small modular nuclear reactor (SMR), a simplified derivative of the country’s State-funded Pebble Bed Modular Reactor (PBMR) project, highlighted nuclear physicist and Stratek Global chairperson Dr Kelvin Kemm in his address to the Energy Indaba conference in Cape Town on Monday. (The PBMR project was effectively terminated in 2009.) This derivative, which was being developed with private funding, was designated the HTMR-100. This was a high-temperature gas-cooled reactor (like the PBMR), making it a Generation IV reactor design. It also meant that it did not need water for cooling, allowing it to be deployed in arid areas, away from coastlines. This made the design very suitable for South Africa and much of the rest of the African continent and in fact it had been specifically designed to meet African conditions, including with regard to issues such as maintenance.
Rich nations have stuck to pledges to phase out coal power despite the energy crunch in the wake of the Ukraine war but China’s expanding coal fleet risks counteracting the climate impact of the closures, a report said on Tuesday. Countries within the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) policy forum and the European Union are on track to close more than 75% of their coal power capacity from 2010 to 2030, the Powering Past Coal Alliance (PPCA) said.
In this article, Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung – South African Institute of International Affairs scholar Danielle Marais writes about the importance of Africa’s mineral resources for the global green energy transition.
Regarding increasing South Africa’s electricity generating capacity in the immediate future, wind, solar photovoltaic (PV) and hybrid power systems were the “only game in town”, affirmed EE Business Intelligence MD Chris Yelland on Monday. He was addressing the Energy Indaba conference in Cape Town. He pointed out that national electricity utility Eskom had about 100 generators (of different types) and that their availability had been declining for 15 years. Their current availability was about 56% or 57%. President Cyril Ramaphosa‘s desire to significantly increase this over the next two years was “physically impossible”, especially as Eskom had no reserve generating capacity. The long-term maintenance needed to increase availability would require further capacity to be taken offline, thereby worsening availability over the next couple of years!
Two wind projects under Bid Window Five (BW5) of South Africa’s Renewable Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme (REIPPPP) have reached financial close – the first REIPPPP projects to advance to financial close since 2018 and also the first BW5 projects to reach the milestone. Located on the border of the Eastern and Northern Cape provinces, the projects are the Phezukomoya and San Kraal wind energy facilities with capacities of 140 MW apiece and which will be built by EDF Renewables and its partners, H1 and Gibb-Crede.
Eskom has announced that Stage 3 loadshedding will be implemented on Monday from 16:00 until 05:00 on Tuesday morning. It will then drop to Stage 2 until 16:00 on Tuesday, when Stage 3 will again be implemented until 05:00 on Wednesday. Stage 2 will then again be implemented until further notice.
Statistics released by the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) underlined how significantly loadshedding has intensified during 2022, which is the first year that the majority of the rotational cuts have been implemented at Stage 4, representing 4 000 MW of simultaneous cuts. It is also the first year since 2019 that Stage 6 loadshedding was implemented, and for far longer periods (nearly ten times longer) than was the case three years ago.
Cape Town Metropolitan Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis on Monday highlighted the city’s programme to generate power locally and free the Metro from loadshedding (rolling power cuts) imposed by the national electricity utility Eskom. He was addressing the Energy Indaba conference being held in the city. “Loadshedding and rolling blackouts are the number one handbrake on the South African economy right now,” he pointed out. A manufacturing industry could not be developed under loadshedding conditions. Services could get by, for example, by installing solar power systems. But that was not an option for heavy industry. And economic growth was essential to eliminate the serious problem of poverty.
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