State-backed firms from the Netherlands will help create a $1-billion green hydrogen fund for investment in South African projects as part of Dutch and Danish investments in renewable energy announced at an event in Pretoria attended by the leaders of the three countries. While the breakdown of investment in the fund wasn’t given, Boitumelo Mosako, the CEO of the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA), said in an earlier interview that Denmark would be involved.
Policy gaps and rigid legislation continue to hold back South Africa’s energy transition, according to a new report supported by diversified miner Anglo American and compiled by research organisation Economist Impact titled ‘Powering Progress: Policy shifts and economic frameworks to enable South Africa’s energy transition’. The report noted that the 2019 Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) remained the key framework governing the energy landscape. However, the consensus among policy experts is that the strategy is incomplete and outdated.
Sixteen of TiAuto’s retail stores have completed their conversion to solar power, as part of Phase 1 of a project to reduce the group’s dependence on Eskom and to move to renewable energy. The company notes that Phase 2 “is now well-underway”, with the goal of having all TiAuto’s stores running on solar energy within the next three years.
The 40 MW Kesses solar photovoltaic (PV) plant, in Kenya, which was built at a cost of $87-million, is now operational. The plant was developed by Private Infrastructure Development Group (PIDG) company the Emerging Africa Infrastructure Fund (EAIF), in partnership with the Standard Bank Group acting through Standard Bank of South Africa Limited, Stanbic Bank Kenya and its project partner Alten Kenya Solarfarms.
Corporate and investment bank RMB has partnered with independent power producer (IPP) Sturdee Energy to help it grow its business in the Southern African renewable energy sector. RMB says its equity investment in Sturdee will give the IPP the firepower to further build out its immediate pipeline of 175 MW and position it to deliver flexible power purchase agreements to target the increasing liberalisation of the sub-Saharan Africa electricity markets.
Ghana is gunning for nuclear energy to account for 30% of its energy mix by 2070, with renewable energy set to account for about 20%. “We see three key energy sources play a leading role in the supply of energy for the people of this country. First, we want to expand renewable energy to about 20 000 MW by 2070. That will mean that renewable energy will account for 20% of the country’s energy mix,” Energy Ministry power directorate deputy director Seth Mahu told journalists in Accra last week.
Ghana’s Bui Power Authority (BPA), with the collaboration of the grid operator, is planning on constructing a new 50 MW solar photovoltaic (PV) farm, in Dagbon, in the north of the country. This is scheduled to be completed by the end of this year, BPA CEO Samuel Kofi Dzamesi has told Engineering News.
State-owned electricity utility Eskom is preparing to issue updated grid queuing rules that will outline how it plans to manage scarce grid connection capacity in a way that avoids “hogging” of capacity and ensures that only “shovel-ready” project are allocated capacity. The new approach is contained in what Eskom terms its Interim Grid Capacity Allocation Rules (IGCAR) document, which outlines a shift from the ‘first come, first served’ framework that has hitherto been implemented to one based on ‘first ready, first served’.
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