Government and business have set a goal of increasing South Africa’s electricity generation capacity by 10.5 GW by the end of 2025 as part of ongoing collaborative efforts to tackle growth-sapping power disruptions and reduce the intensity and almost daily frequency of loadshedding by year-end. In a briefing held following the latest meeting between President Cyril Ramaphosa’s Cabinet and those senior business leaders who have committed to supporting government in overcoming its loadshedding, logistics and crime crises, the Presidency’s Rudi Dicks said the capacity could arise from multiple sources, including by recovering capacity from Eskom’s unreliable coal fleet.
JSE-listed Murray & Roberts (M&R) has reported a significant year-on-year reduction in its attributable loss for the six months ended December 31, 2023, signalling a positive turn in its financial performance. The company recorded a substantially reduced attributable loss of R95-million for the six months under review, which is in stark contrast to the R2.5-billion loss reported for the six months ended December 2022. 
Distributed Renewable Energy (DRE) was going to be essential to achieve the goal of universal access to energy by 2030, both in Africa and globally. So highlighted World Bank Energy Sector Management Assistance Programme Lead Energy Specialist Raihan Elahi, on Wednesday. He was addressing a session of the Africa Energy Indaba, in Cape Town. “We’re really off track” regarding achieving universal access to energy by 2030, he pointed out. Worldwide, in 2020, 675-million people still had no access to electricity, while in 2021, 2.3-billion people had no access to clean cooking methods. These shortfalls existed against a background of increased vulnerability to climate shocks.
The Southern African Power Pool’s (SAPP’s) Regional Transmission Infrastructure Financing Facility (RTIFF) will be managed by climate-focused blended finance fund manager Climate Fund Managers (CFM), it was jointly announced on Tuesday, on the fringes of the 2024 Africa Energy Indaba, in Cape Town. The RTIFF, developed by the SAPP in partnership with the Southern African Development Community (SADC), aims to raise $1.3-billion to finance improved electricity interconnection and cross-border …