It is possible to bridge South Africa’s engineering and construction sector capacity gaps through education and training initiatives that provide a strong foundation for future infrastructure development projects, says civil engineering professional body South African Institution of Civil Engineering (SAICE). The existing infrastructure gaps – owing to the lack of infrastructure maintenance, operationality, investment and skilled engineers – are not insurmountable, says SAICE advocacy committee members John Samuel and Wynand Dreyer who are both public–private partnerships (PPP), Private Sector Participation (PSP) and infrastructure operations and maintenance experts.
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The Norwegian investment fund for developing countries, Norfund, has invested $75-million (more than R1-billion) in South African independent power producer (IPP) and renewable energy (solar, wind and battery storage) developer Mulilo, the latter has announced. This investment was managed through Norfund’s Climate Investment Fund. Since 2023, Mulilo’s majority shareholder has been Danish group Copenhagen Investment Partners (CIP). The latter invested in Mulilo through its New Markets Fund I.
Cabinet has officially approved the lifting of the Pebble Bed Modular Reactor (PBMR) nuclear technology from care and maintenance. “This decision provides the South African Nuclear Energy Corporation (Necsa) with a legal basis to engage with potential international partners and investors for the revival and further development of the project,” Minister in the Presidency Khumbudzo Ntshavheni said in a post-Cabinet briefing.
Cape Town Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis and Urban Waste Management MMC Grant Twigg this week powered up the city’s new gas-to-energy plant at the Coastal Park Landfill. The plant generates enough electricity to power 4 300 households by converting landfill gas to power.
The Industrial Gas Users Association–South Africa (IGUA-SA) is calling for the creation of a new structure under The Presidency to coordinate the actions needed to avert the ‘gas cliff’ faced by industrial consumers by 2030 and to lay the foundations for longer-term security of supply and demand growth. The proposal for the establishment of a National Gas Project Team, which would operate along lines similar to structures established to tackle the electricity and logistics crises, is included in a new ‘Gas Roadmap’ document released by IGUA-SA on November 12.
The National Treasury has confirmed that a scheme established to enable municipalities to write of arrear debt owing to Eskom by meeting various conditions, including keeping their current accounts up to date, is failing to arrest the crisis. “While 24 municipalities have qualified for the first one-third write-off after 12 consecutive months of payments and 21 have generally maintained payments, as of 7 May 2025, 47 municipalities remain in default,” a section in the Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement confirms.
JSE-listed real estate investment trust (Reit) Growthpoint Properties has acquired a 30% stake in independent power producer Serengeti Energy’s operational Boston Hydroelectric plant, in the Lesotho Highlands Water Scheme near Clarens, in the Free State. Sabrina Jardim tells us more.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) has declared that the “Age of Electricity is here” in its latest World Energy Outlook, which again underlines that electricity demand will grow much faster than overall energy use in all three scenarios outlined in the report. “Last year, we said the world was moving quickly into the Age of Electricity – and it’s clear today that it has already arrived,” executive director Fatih Birol says, highlighting that rising electricity consumption is no longer limited to emerging and developing economies.
The Mossel Bay municipality has cut the ribbon on the Hartenbos Waste Water Treatment Works solar PV plant and microgrid project. Developed in partnership with Solareff and Element Consulting Engineers, the hybrid, grid-tied microgrid is designed to ensure uninterrupted power supply to the wastewater treatment facility, up to and including Stage 6 loadshedding.
JSE-listed real estate investment trust Growthpoint Properties will provide verified renewable energy certificates (RECs) to 26 branches of financial services firm Nedbank that use the power Growthpoint’s renewable energy small-scale embedded generator (SSEG) plants generate. The bank will offset its Scope 2 emissions across the branches located in Growthpoint-owned shopping malls and offices in five provinces, which together cover 8 200 m2 of retail space.
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