All the critical minerals necessary for all renewable and battery energy technologies are found in Africa, highlighted consultancy and data company Rystad Energy senior partner and head of analysis Per Magnus Nysveen. He was addressing the Critical Minerals Africa conference, at the Cape Town International Convention Centre on Tuesday. Nysveen defined renewable energy as encompassing geothermal as well as solar and wind power. Batteries were also low carbon energy sources and included both mobile (vehicle) and stationary applications.
Significant additional clean electricity can be generated economically by combining dry and wet cooling technologies at power plants, Industrial Water Cooling (IWC) consulting and research and development manager Dr Hanno Reuter, who is also an extraordinary professor at Stellenbosch University, has said. In a webinar discussion hosted by Creamer Media on October 11, he noted that the combination of recoverable, renewable and conventional energy power generation was a good solution for the power generation industry worldwide.
Financial services firm Nedbank has concluded a R2.1-billion Green Private Power Tier 2 Bond, listed on the sustainability segment of the JSE, with the proceeds to focus on notionally funding private renewable energy projects in South Africa. Private renewable energy power projects refer to commercial and utility-scale renewable energy projects with private corporate offtakers. These projects will play a pivotal role in advancing renewable energy capacity, accelerating the transition to a low-carbon economy and lending support to the underlying corporates’ own sustainability objectives.
An Eskom sub-contractor was arrested last week for allegedly trying to solicit a bribe from a coal transport company at the Camden power station in Mpumalanga. The suspect, who was arrested on 11 October, was a sub-contractor for the power utility’s Eskom Rotek Industries subsidiary, which does construction, maintenance and transportation services.
African National Congress President Cyril Ramaphosa claims that South Africa “has turned a definite corner as far as loadshedding is concerned”, adding that the levels and frequency of loadshedding are expected to improve during the fourth quarter. In closing remarks following the party’s National Executive Committee meeting, Ramaphosa attributed this claim to the “return of Kusile units, embedded generation by private households and businesses, and demand management”.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) is warning that investment in transmission and distribution infrastructure is failing to keep pace with renewables projects, and is leading to a large and growing queue of projects waiting to be connected to the grid globally. In a newly published report titled ‘Electricity Grids and Secure Energy Transitions’, the agency notes that advanced projects with a combined capacity of 1 500 GW, or five times the amount of solar and wind capacity added worldwide in 2022, are currently waiting to be connected to the grid.
President Cyril Ramaphosa reiterated that his administration wasn’t moving to privatize state-owned companies as the government initiates reforms to clean up their balance sheets and revive their performance. Private-sector investment was necessary to mobilize funds for economic infrastructure given the government’s limited fiscal space, Ramaphosa said at a meeting of his party, the African National Congress. The involvement would be “subject to stringent regulations,” which would enable energy security and exporting of critical goods.
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