If SA is to meet its globally committed climate goals the country will have to ban the sale of new internal combustion (ICE) vehicles by 2035 and shift at least 15% of road traffic to rail.
A new report that focuses on the decarbonisation of SA’s transport sector said more than R300bn will have to be invested to reverse the decline in rail services and to allow a big share of the transport of freight and people to shift from road to rail.
The study, one of a series of reports released as part of the SA Just Transition and Climate Pathways study, looked at road and rail transport as well as local aviation and shipping.
It is hoped that the broader study, run by the National Business Initiative, in partnership with Business Unity SA and Boston Consulting Group, presents a better understanding of the practical steps the country will have to take to achieve its revised nationally determined contribution (NDC) submitted at COP26.
The revised NDC committed the country to reduce carbon emissions within a target range of 350-million tonnes to 420-million tonnes of CO²-equivalent by 2030, and to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. That would be a reduction of about 20%-33% from current emissions by 2030.
“[SA] faces the dual challenge of decarbonising whilst improving transport as a service for consumers and enabling other sectors to decarbonise,” the report states.
“No-regret actions include incorporating EVs in the EU trade agreement to reduce import tariffs, investing in revitalising the rail infrastructure, and improving governance within rail and port management.”
According to the report transport in SA is the third-largest emitting sector after energy and the metals sector, contributing about 10% of total emissions.
About 90% of transport emissions are from road transport. The report says there are about 8-million passenger vehicles on SA’s roads, more than 300,000 minibus taxis, about 60,000 buses and 3-million freight vehicles.
SA has experienced a reduction in passenger and freight transport via rail due to the inadequate state of the rail network which has seen reliance shift to “more expensive, inefficient, and carbon-intense road transport for private and commercial transport”.
State-owned rail company Transnet and the Passenger Rail Agency SA (Prasa) suffers from “a massive capital investment backlog and inadequate funding, obsolete and ageing infrastructure, deteriorating rolling stock and outdated technologies […] as well as vandalism and theft,” the report says.
It estimates that repairing and developing new rail infrastructure will require investments of at least R300bn which is unlikely to be met without investment via public-private partnerships.
The report also champions the acceleration of green technology, saying that about 750,000 EVs will be required on the roads by 2030, with a phase-out of ICE vehicle sales needed by 2035.
But it is not only on the demand-side that SA needs to shift to EVs. About 60% of local vehicle production is exported, of which 60% is European markets. SA faces the risk of losing these markets as trade partners implement their low-carbon commitments — a risk that could see the local automotive manufacturing sector “collapse as it gets out of sync with key export markets”.
The electric vehicle sector is one of the priority sectors identified in SA’s R1.5-trillion Just Energy Transition Investment Plan that was endorsed by the cabinet in 2022.
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