Higher revenue collections support consolidation as growth headwinds strengthen

Better-than-expected revenue collection enabled Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana to report an improvement in government’s fiscal position relative to the one forecast in the February Budget. However, slowing global and domestic growth together with ongoing power cuts pose a risk to the fiscal outlook, as does the prospect of a higher-than-budgeted public-service wage settlement.
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Komati turnaround will cost close to R8bn, and the World Bank may foot most of the bill

Repurposing Eskom’s coal-fired power station, Komati, would cost around R7.9-billion, project documents from the World Bank show. Eskom has been engaging with the World Bank in providing funding for the re-powering and repurposing of Komati. The power station’s first unit was commissioned in 1961, and it had nine operational units, each with a capacity of 100MW. The last unit is to be decommissioned at the end of October. But Eskom has relied on multiple socioeconomic assessments to determine how to give the power station, situated in Mpumalanga, a second life so that it can continue to support the local economy and livelihoods of those in the affected region.
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Second Ilanga Cup to become a 24-hour endurance race

The organisers of this year’s inaugural Ilanga Cup Solar Challenge say the event will be back next year, albeit in a somewhat different format. The 2023 edition will return to the Red Star Raceway, in Delmas, on July 5 and 6.
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Eskom debt plan in focus at South Africa’s mid-term budget

South Africa’s finance minister is expected to announce a plan to take on part of power utility Eskom’s mammoth debt in a mid-term budget on Wednesday, although analysts say the legally complex transfer will take time to execute. State-owned Eskom has been mired in financial crisis for years and has a roughly R400-billion in debt it cannot afford to service.
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Coal can ‘reinvent itself’, CGS must play role in the energy transition – Mantashe 

During his keynote address at the Council for Geoscience (CGS) Summit, held at the Durban International Convention Centre from October 25 to 27, Minerals and Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe expressed his belief that coal could “reinvent itself”, given sufficient investment. Mantashe cited the CGS’s lead role in the pilot carbon capture, utilisation and storage project in Leandra, Mpumalanga. The project, which is expected to become operational in early 2024, will test the feasibility of injecting between 10 000 t to 50 000 t of carbon dioxide a year, to a depth of at least 1 km. 
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Rand takes big hit as investors worry about Godongwana speech, Beijing developments

On Tuesday morning, the rand approached R18.50/$ – trading at levels last seen in early 2020 as the country digested the implications of the first hard Covid-19 lockdown. The currency is under pressure ahead of Wednesday’s medium-term budget speech announcement, and has also taken a knock as riskier assets digested political developments in China, the biggest single destination for South Africa’s exports.
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World is in its ‘first truly global energy crisis’ – IEA’s Birol

Tightening markets for liquefied natural gas (LNG) worldwide and major oil producers cutting supply have put the world in the middle of “the first truly global energy crisis”, the head of the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Tuesday. Rising imports of LNG to Europe amid the Ukraine crisis and a potential rebound in Chinese appetite for the fuel will tighten the market as only 20 billion cubic meters of new LNG capacity will come to market next year, IEA executive director Fatih Birol said during the Singapore International Energy Week.
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South Africa to seek ‘Just Energy Transition Financing Framework’ deal at COP27

Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment Minister Barbara Creecy reports that South Africa will push for the establishment of a people-centred ‘Just Energy transition Financing Framework’ at the upcoming COP27 climate conference, to be held in Sharm el-Sheik, Egypt, in early November. Such a framework, she told a pre-COP27 stakeholder consultation meeting in Johannesburg, could support coal phase-down programmes in developing countries, as well as ambitious renewable-energy investments, while supporting workers and communities that could be made vulnerable as a result of the transition away from fossil fuels.
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IAEA report on extending the life of the Koeberg nuclear plant lists issues to be addressed

As a result of a Promotion of Access to Information Act application by the Democratic Alliance (the official opposition in the South African Parliament but the ruling party in the Western Cape province), the full International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Safety Aspects of Long Term Operation (SALTO) report on South Africa’s Koeberg nuclear power plant (NPP) has been made public. The IAEA SALTO mission visited Koeberg, which is located in the Western Cape, near Cape Town, from March 22 to March 31 this year. The visit and inspection were at the invitation of Eskom. On the conclusion of that mission, the IAEA had issued a press release, dated March 31, and reported on by Engineering News on April 1. In that press release, the IAEA reported, in high level and general terms, the strengths and weaknesses the SALTO team had found at Koeberg. With the release of the report, it is now possible to see what the specific issues were.
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RES4Africa forms green hydrogen working group

Just energy transition organisation the RES4Africa Foundation aims to increase its expertise and operative efforts dedicated to Africa’s green hydrogen sector and has, therefore, organised an operative working group, which gathers periodically and is attended by experts from RES4Africa’s membership network. The working group responds to the necessity of fostering knowledge, technical and human capacities, while stimulating the creation of multi-stakeholder partnerships to analyse the current status quo of Africa’s green hydrogen sector and formulate specific advocacy proposals, the organisation says.
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