Six Western Cape municipalities, as well as the City of Cape Town, have been named by Western Cape Finance and Economic Opportunities Minister David Maynier as candidates to participate in the first phase of the province’s Municipal Energy Resilience (MER) project. The MER initiative, which was unveiled in 2020, has been established to enable the development of municipal energy projects in the province in line with recent changes to the country’s energy regulations, empowering municipalities to purchase energy directly from independent power producers (IPPs) and/or to develop their own generation facilities.