The US remains committed, as one of the international partners to SA’s Just Energy Transition Partnership, to supporting “the just piece” of the transition, said US treasury secretary Janet Yellen, who is in SA this week.
During a visit on Friday to the US-funded Nkangala Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TEVT) College in Emalahleni, which is providing skills to local women to prepare them to work in the renewable energy sector, Yellen said it was good to “see first-hand the difference that SA’s Just Energy Transition Partnership can make in advancing an energy transition in communities like this and ensuring the transition delivers on the ‘just’ promise”.
“The US is committed to the SA JETP, and we’re committed to a transition that is just for the communities and workers that are affected,” she said.
Yellen said that in her discussions with President Cyril Ramaphosa and mineral resources and energy minister Gwede Mantashe on SA’s just energy transition, she communicated that the US would try to “support a set of plans that SA has devised itself that involve a gradual transition”.
Mantashe posted a comment on Twitter that in their meeting with Yellen “we agreed to a transition from high-to-low carbon emissions”.
“Our policy is that of mixed energy technologies to address energy poverty while transition[ing] to a low carbon economy,” he said.
Speaking during an ANC energy dialogue in Johannesburg earlier this week, Mantashe said that some of the disagreement about SA’s just transition was due to some interpreting this as a transition from coal-fired energy generation to renewables, when from his perspective this had to be a transition from high- to low emissions transition.
In meeting with businesses operating in SA during her visit such as the Ford Motor Company assembly plant in Silverton, Yellen saw “real enthusiasm and optimism about the attractive investment opportunities that exist in SA”.
Load-shedding was a “considerable challenge”, but businesses she spoke to feel that SA had a strong set of fundamentals such as a court and legal system that “work well” and “enforce contract” and a very strong financial sector.
Yellen also spoke about the need to address the problem of corruption in SA saying that Ramaphosa had made that a priority of his administration.
“We agree that it’s really critical to address corruption in order to have an effective government that South Africans can have confidence in, and it’s a critical part of the business environment,” she said.
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