Author Archive for: Engineering News

Shareholder activist organisation Just Share has analysed financial services firm Absa’s recently published Coal Financing Standard and Oil and Gas Financing Standard, as well as Absa’s 2022 disclosures partially aligned with the recommendations of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (2021 TCFD Report), and says “Absa’s intention is quite clearly to continue to fund coal, oil and gas projects.” The bank’s oil and gas standard states that “Absa will strive to achieve a balanced energy portfolio funding diversification mix between renewable energy, oil, natural gas, biomass, hydrogen and coal”, Just Share climate change engagement director Robyn Hugo says.

Minerals Council South Africa says it supports the inclusion of the private sector in government’s plan to resolve the country’s electricity crisis. “President Cyril Ramaphosa outlined a detailed plan by the government to abolish the 100 MW licensing cap on private sector renewable energy projects, ensure greater private sector participation to urgently install electricity generation capacity, address Eskom’s R400-billion debt and its internal crime and corruption problems, and streamline regulatory processes by eliminating red tape.

The Democratic Alliance (DA) announced on Tuesday that it will monitor government’s progress in its energy plan and hold it to account with the launch of the party’s Energy Plan Implementation Tracker. On Monday evening, President Cyril Ramaphosa unveiled several far-reaching interventions – including a doubling in the allocation for the next renewables procurement round, the scrapping of the 100 MW licence-exemption threshold for distributed generators and a proposal of a feed-in tariff for self-generating households and businesses – as part of a much-anticipated action plan for ending load-shedding.

President Cyril Ramaphosa unveiled several far-reaching interventions – including a doubling in the allocation for the next renewables procurement round, the scrapping of the 100 MW licence-exemption threshold for distributed generators and a proposal of a feed-in tariff for self-generating households and businesses – as part of a much-anticipated action plan for ending load-shedding. While refraining from declaring the “national crisis” a state of disaster as sought by some opposition parties, the President also announced that “special legislation” would be placed before Parliament to address remaining legal and regulatory obstacles to the urgent introduction of new capacity.

South Africa plans to try and resolve its chronic power shortage by making it easier for private companies to build plants and paying households and businesses to produce electricity from solar panels. The urgent need to fix the country’s 14-year electricity crisis has been laid bare by five weeks of power outages that ended last week, the worst since the near-collapse of the grid in 2008. President Cyril Ramaphosa and the ruling African National Congress have been heavily criticized over their inability to resolve the problem, despite repeated promises to do so.