Mineral Resources and Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe’s announcement of the opening of Bid Window 5 of the Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme (REIPPPP) in March this year will result in significant opportunities to use more energy storage technologies locally, says battery equipment supplier REVOV MD Lance Dickerson. The REIPPPP will procure 2 600 MW of renewable energy from independent power producers and REVOV is “uniquely positioned” to provide affordable energy storage solutions, owing to the growing availability of second-hand lithium-iron phosphate batteries.
A leading South African climate scientist believes a ‘Gauteng day-zero drought’ represents the biggest near-term climate change risk faced by the country, which is poised to become hotter and drier as average global temperatures rise. Francois Engelbrecht, who is a distinguished professor of Climatology at the University of the Witwatersrand’s Global Change Institute and a lead author of chapter four of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC’s) recently released Working Group One Sixth Assessment Report, says the Southern African region has been identified as a climate-change hot spot, owing to a projected rate of temperature change that will be twice the global average.
Diversified miner South32 has posted a 21% year-on-year increase in manganese output from its South African mines to 2.26-million tonnes for the year ended June 30.
The JSE-, ASX- and LSE-listed miner has a 44% interest in two manganese mines – Mamatwan and Wessels – in South Africa, based in the Kalahari Basin of the Northern Cape province, coupled with a 60% interest in an alloy smelter near Meyerton, in Gauteng.
Dr Ranajit Sahu, an engineer with more than three decades of experience in power plant design, has found that large quantities of greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions are “unavoidable”, even if the cleanest available technology is used for new coal-fired power generation. South Africa’s Integrated Resource Plan for Electricity (IRP) 2019 claims that new coal generation capacity will be cleaner because high-efficiency, low-emission (HELE) generation technology will be used, although it does not state which kind.
Pilot investment programme UK Climate Investments on August 18 fulfilled its cornerstone commitment of R500-million to help establish Africa’s first dedicated renewable energy yieldco, which is managed by majority black-owned fund manager Revego Fund Managers. Revego aims to tackle the challenge of a lack of access to electricity in sub-Saharan Africa, and accelerate the deployment of new clean electricity generation capacity by acquiring equity in operational renewable energy projects across the region, helping developers unlock and recycle capital.
The Portfolio Committee on Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment says it is generally satisfied with the compliance of chemicals company Sasol with its obligations on air quality; however, State-owned power utility Eskom is not complying with its obligations owing to delays encountered in its air-quality offset programme. This information comes from briefings received by the committee from the Department of Health on August 17 on the cost of air pollution in South Africa, as well as from Eskom and Sasol on their purported non-compliance with the environmental laws.
Eskom CEO Andre de Ruyter has outlined the case for leveraging South Africa’s transition to green energy to reverse the country’s “vicious cycle of deindustrialisation and unemployment” and to trigger a “virtuous cycle of local demand for local goods to create investment and jobs”. Delivering the Dr Hendrik Johannes van der Bijl Memorial Lecture during a virtual event hosted by the University of Pretoria and the South African Academy of Engineering, De Ruyter rejected the notion of South Africa abandoning manufacturing in favour of commodity exports and services.
The National Energy Regulator of South Africa (Nersa) is still analysing the implications that a recent amendment to Schedule 2 of the Electricity Regulation Act, exempting grid-tied generation facilities below 100 MW from licensing, will have on its processes, rules and guidelines. However, fulltime regulatory member responsible for electricity Nhlanhla Gumede reports that Nersa views such registration primarily as an administrative process, rather than one where it will be expected to apply its regulatory discretion. Speaking during a Power Future Labs webinar on the implications of the reform, which was gazetted by Mineral Resources and Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe on August 12, Gumede said that approvals were likely to be delegated to Nersa officials rather than having the Energy Regulator deliberate on them at its formal meetings.
Solar technology and engineering expert Sola has launched its first engineering bursary. The bursary will pay for the tuition of a final-year electrical engineering student and provide them with a job opportunity as a graduate engineer in the solar photovoltaic (PV) field.
South Africa’s carbon-heavy fuels and chemicals group Sasol is poised to announce a “substantially higher” target for the reduction of its greenhouse-gas emissions following an intensive period of financial and organisational restructuring during its 2021 financial year. The JSE-listed group took far-reaching actions – including selling $3.8-billion-worth of assets, slashing capital expenditure (capex) and securing savings of more than $2-billion – to deleverage its unsustainable balance sheet without resorting to the $2-billion rights issue initially mooted.
INDUSTRY NEWS
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