Investment in renewable energy in SA continues to grow, despite erratic policymaking by the government, according to global energy think-tank REN21.
REN21 is a France-based energy think-tank comprised of a worldwide community of players, including intergovernmental and nongovernmental organisations and academia.
The REN21’s Renewables 2019 Global Status Report (GSR), released this week, states that SA is ahead of its peers in Africa in terms of investment in renewable energy. In 2018 SA recorded $3.9bn investment in renewables, up 33-fold from 2017.
Record high
Morocco followed with $2.9bn, up 157% from 2017. Across the region, solar power was the largest recipient of project financing, with a record $9.8bn, and wind power investment reached $4.7bn, a record high.
The think-tank’s report comes as the government is scrambling to find solutions to the Eskom crisis. The power utility, which supplies virtually all of SA’s energy, has struggled with maintenance issues and design flaws at its new coal power stations, Medupi and Kusile. It had to resort to stage-four load-shedding in March as it could not meet demand.
Recent statistics compiled by the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research energy centre show that without renewables SA would have experienced higher stages of load-shedding more frequently.
The Integrated Resource Plan, the government’s long-term energy plan, which is yet to come into force, embraces renewables and envisages an overall reduction in coal-generated energy by 2030.
However, while SA’s Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme, which was launched in 2011, is seen as a model for what can be achieved through private sector inclusion, the sector’s potential has been compromised by stop-start procurement in recent years.
The GSR report confirms that for the fourth consecutive year more renewable power capacity across the world was installed than fossil fuel and nuclear power combined — 100GW gigawatts of solar PV alone was added in 2018, enough to meet more than 25% of electricity demand in France.
Despite progress in renewables uptake, energy efficiency and energy access, the world is not on track to meet the targets of the Paris Agreement or the Sustainable Development Goals, the authors of the report say.
Global energy-related carbon dioxide (CO²) emissions grew an estimated 1.7% in 2018 due to increased fossil fuel consumption. Global subsidies for fossil fuel use increased 11% from 2017, and fossil fuel companies continued to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on lobbying to delay, control or block climate change policies and on advertisements to influence public opinion.
According to the report, renewable energy support policies and targets were present in nearly all countries worldwide by the end of 2018 and are found at all levels of government. “However, renewable energy policy frameworks vary greatly in scope and comprehensiveness, and most remain far from the ambition level required to reach international climate goals.”
According to the report, “By 2018 renewable energy targets had been adopted in 169 countries at the national or state/provincial level. New and revised targets have become increasingly ambitious, particularly in the power sector, but far fewer countries had renewable energy targets specifically for the heating, cooling and transport sectors, and targets for economy-wide energy transformation remain rare.”
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