South Africa’s plan to create a power transmission company that will attract the investment needed to strengthen the national grid has been hobbled by its restrictive debt arrangements with parent Eskom Holdings, two people familiar with the situation said. Under the plan to separate the unit, which Eskom presented to its creditors on June 10, the national power utility will extend a R39.9-billion loan to the National Transmission Company of South Africa, or NTCSA. That funding will be guaranteed by the NTCSA’s assets if Eskom, which is R396-billion in debt, doesn’t meet its own obligations.
Trade, Industry and Competition Minister Ebrahim Patel reports that government is working to find a “pragmatic solution” to the problem where local-content requirements contained in government’s electricity procurement programmes are delaying the construction of utility scale renewable-energy projects. “I’ve asked the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition (DTIC) team to meet with the energy team to see how we can ensure that our localisation goals don’t retard the development of green energy, and that we find ways to speed up processes,” Patel said in response to a question posed by Engineering News on the side-lines of the Manufacturing Indaba.
International exhibition and conference organiser Hyve Group has opened a Johannesburg office as a means to enhance its presence in South Africa and expand opportunities for South African citizens.
Hyve Group, which employs over 650 people in 12 offices globally, organises over 50 trade exhibitions and conferences in 11 countries and more than 20 technology-enabled meeting programmes a year.
The hard to abate sectors currently produce more than a third of the worlds’ climate chaining emissions, which we must sharply curtail if we are to hold global warming to 1.5ºC. Yet, they are integral to humanity and ultimately they ’re playing an integral role in reducing our reliance on fossil fuels and other emissions producers.
Eskom will implement Stage 2 load-shedding every evening between 17:00 and 22:00, from Monday to Thursday. The power utility said the load shedding was due to the continued shortage of generation capacity.
Achieving Africa’s energy and climate goals by 2030, including universal access, will require a more than doubling in energy investment this decade, rising to a yearly rate of $190-billion from 2026 to 2030, a new International Energy Agency (IEA) report shows. It will also require the connection of 90-million people a year, triple the rate of recent years, if Africa is to deliver modern energy services to the 600-million people who currently lack access.
The power system is under severe pressure and there is a risk of load-shedding at short notice if there are any significant breakdowns at Eskom plants, the power utility warned on Monday morning. The power system will be under strain for the next few weeks, it added in a statement.
Before moving ahead with the procurement of gas-fired generation, South Africa should update both its Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) for electricity and its Gas Master Plan to reflect prevailing renewables and battery costs, as well as the country’s carbon constraints, a new Meridian Economics study argues. Titled ‘Hot Air About Gas: An Economic Analysis of the Scope and Role for Gas-Fired Power Generation in South Africa’, the study warns that the current policy approach of anchoring gas demand in the domestic electricity sector is premised on outdated cost and emission assumptions.
The President of the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26), Alok Sharma of the UK, arrived in South Africa on Sunday, to support the implementation of the South Africa Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP). He will depart the country on Tuesday. The JETP was announced at COP26, which took place last November and which was hosted by the UK. (Sharma will hold the presidency until COP27, which will be hosted by Egypt and is expected to take place in this coming November.) Apart from South Africa, the JETP member countries are the European Union, France, Germany, the UK and the US.
Energy management and automation multinational Schneider Electric is planning to partner with more South African manufacturers as part of a strategy geared towards accelerating the expansion of its domestic market presence, while increasing local content. Global CFO Hilary Maxson told Engineering News during a recent visit to South Africa that the group would pursue licence agreements with local companies, which would produce Schneider Electric -certified products using specialised components, but with the goal of progressively localising the solution over time.
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