The appetite for rooftop solar photovoltaic (PV) installations has reached record levels in Cape Town, with March now the best month on record for new applications to install solar energy, says Cape Town Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis. This comes as residents look to capitalise on incentive programmes to help end load-shedding over time.
Mineral Resources and Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe and the National Nuclear Regulator (NNR) have lost a court bid concerning an anti-nuclear activist. In January this year, the Western Cape High Court ruled that the minister’s decision to fire anti-nuclear activist Peter Becker from the board of SA’s nuclear safety regulator was unlawful.
The Presidency insists that the transfer of responsibility for Section 34(1) of the Electricity Regulation Act to Electricity Minister Dr Kgosientsho Ramokgopa “provides the Minister with a powerful tool to address South Africa’s current energy shortfall, by directing the actions that are required to build new generation capacity”. However, it has also confirmed that these powers effectively enable him only to issue a determination that new generation capacity is needed in order to ensure security of energy supply.
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Multifaith environmental justice organisation, South African Faith Communities Environment Institute (SAFCEI), has decried the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy’s (DMRE’s) plans to procure more nuclear power as a step in the wrong direction. The organisation has cited the long build times and lengthy over-runs as ineffective in urgently dealing with the energy crisis the country is facing.
In an effort to ensure businesses remain invested in South Africa’s biggest city, the City of Johannesburg (CoJ) has announced that it will offer some key customers, essential services and businesses a loadshedding reprieve.
The CoJ will in a gradual manner, from early June, exclude certain customers – network configurations permitting.
Following more than two months of uncertainty and reported Cabinet infighting, President Cyril Ramaphosa has transferred the Ministerial powers relating to the procurement of new electricity generation to Electricity Minister Dr Kgosientsho Ramokgopa. Until now Ramakgopa has had no formal Ministerial powers, despite having been appointed on March 7 and despite the President having indicated that he intended using Section 97 of the Constitution to grant such powers.
As the energy crisis in the country incrementally worsens, the ramifications are considerable for property owners, who are having to resort to various options to limit the impact of prolonged periods of outages, future-proof their assets and ensure business continuity. However, this is not enough to contain the fallout, and property owners are also calling for efforts to be bolstered, through other solutions, to resolve the energy challenges.
Trade, Industry and Competition Minister Ebrahim Patel outlined firm investment, localisation, export and manufacturing jobs targets in his 2023/24 Budget Vote address to Parliament this week. In a speech prefaced by what the Minister described as a world in in the midst of ‘polycrisis’, or the simultaneous occurrence of several catastrophic events, Patel said his department’s central mission was to build a more resilient economy that was able to grow and transform “despite extraordinary headwinds and challenges”.
The belief that renewable energy is the sole answer to South Africa’s energy crisis is irrational, National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) general secretary Irvin Jim has said.
“You can’t run a factory by wind or sun. What happens when there is no wind and the sun is behind a cloud? It is like lying to children by telling them you can do a braai with a torch,” he quipped to delegates attending the Metal Industries Collective Bargaining Summit in Johannesburg on May 25.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) is forecasting that investment in solar will rise to more than $1-billion a day, or to some $380-billion for 2023 as a whole, increasing spending on the renewable technology to above upstream oil for the first time ever. The agency’s World Energy Investment also indicates that more than $1.7-trillion of the $2.8-trillion to be invested in energy globally this year, will be directed towards clean technologies, including renewables, electric vehicles, nuclear, grids, storage, low-emission fuels, efficiency improvements and heat pumps.
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