State power utility Eskom said it would implement Stage 2 rotational power cuts from 17:00 to 22:00 on Wednesday due to the failure of three generation units. This would be the third day that Eskom has implemented load-shedding from 17:00 to 22:00.
Building big, conventional nuclear power plants is slow and expensive. That’s one reason the industry is staking its future on a new generation of smaller advanced reactors. Still in development, these offer the promise of carbon-free energy and could back up the ebbs and flows of renewable power in clean grids of the future. As Russia’s war in Ukraine galvanizes Western countries to break their reliance on Russian energy exports, in part by accelerating green technologies that will replace fossil fuels, one solution could be boosting the deployment of nuclear energy. Advanced nuclear startup Oklo Inc. says it could build a new plant in about one year. It wouldn’t be big, but it could be ready quickly if the US was willing to fast-track the regulatory process, said Oklo’s CEO Jacob DeWitte.
Uganda said it acquired land for the construction of East Africa’s first nuclear power plant as the continent’s top exporter of coffee beans attempts to expand its electricity generation capacity multi-fold. The Minister of State for Energy Okasai Sidronius Opolot made the announcement in a statement without identifying the site. The nation in 2017 said that it planned to build a 2 000 MW nuclear power plant by 2032.
A record 295 GW of new renewables capacity was installed globally in 2021 and the International Energy Agency (IEA) is forecasting that installations will rise to about 320 GW this year, despite elevated costs for both solar photovoltaic (PV) and wind. Solar PV is forecast to account for 60% of the 2022 increase, with the commissioning of 190 GW, which would represent a 25% year-on-year gain. The technology is also on course to reach yearly installations of 200 GW in 2023.
The US has three international energy priorities, and they also relate to Africa, says US State Department Undersecretary for Economic Growth, Energy and the Environment, José Fernandez. Speaking at the Inveesting in African Mining Indaba 2022 on Tuesday, Fernandez said these priorities were integral to the US’s support for high standard economic growth and development around the world.
New infrastructure was just as vulnerable to climate change as ageing infrastructure, said South African Local Government Association (Salga) senior climate change adviser Slindile Maphumulo on May 10. She explained that, while ageing infrastructure was vulnerable to being damaged or destroyed during extreme weather events, new infrastructure was equally at risk as a result of being built poorly, slowly or not at all owing to poor tender systems, the appointment of incompetent service providers and contractors, black economic empowerment systems, inexperienced engineers and, most of all, rampant corruption.
The Pretoria High Court confirmed, on May 3, that the environmental authorisation for the planned 600 MW KiPower coal-fired power station had expired, meaning the proposed power station cannot be built.

KiPower was intended to be built outside Emalahleni, in Mpumalanga – a region with poor air quality as a result an existing fleet of coal-fired power stations in the vicinity, Sasol’s coal-to-liquids plant in Secunda and the Natref refinery, in Sasolburg, notes environmental groups groundWork and the Centre for Environmental Rights.

Automaker Ford South Africa’s (Ford SA’s) Silverton assembly plant, in Pretoria, which produces the Ranger pickup for the domestic and export markets, has officially started sourcing 35% of its electricity needs from solar photovoltaic (PV) energy generation. Ford SA has a long-term power purchase agreement in place with SolarAfrica, which installed PV carports for 3 610 vehicles at the Silverton plant.
Stage 2 load-shedding will again be implemented from 17:00 to 22:00 on Tuesday night, Eskom announced on Tuesday morning. In addition, there is a possibility of higher load-shedding stages should any breakdowns occur during the day on Tuesday.
South Africa aims to pursue a financing solution that embraces a “different paradigm” with regard to the allocation of risk, as well as return expectations and investment horizons, when negotiating the terms and conditions of a $8.5-billion climate finance offer made in November by several developed countries. A ‘Political Declaration on the Just Energy Transition in South Africa’, which incorporates the financing offer, was signed with the European Union, France, Germany, the UK and the US on the side-lines of the COP26 climate talks, in Glasgow, Scotland.