SA has made good progress in advancing the just energy transition through various planning initiatives, but it now has to focus on “increasing action”.
This is according to one of the directors of the Bezos Earth Fund (BEF), who was in SA recently to meet government officials, the Presidential Climate Commission and other stakeholders in the just energy transition.
The fund was set up in 2020 with a $10bn grant commitment from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos to help drive climate and nature solutions globally.
One of its implementation partners, the Global Energy Alliance for People and the Planet (GEAPP), has already invested about $20m into SA’s just transition with an interest in growing this further.
One of the projects that benefited is the just transition skills training facility at Eskom’s Komati power station in Mpumalanga, which was decommissioned in 2022. The Bezos Earth Fund was one of the main contributors to more than $2m in grant funding to establish the facility.
“Komati has been a focal point of discussion [in SA’s just energy transition] and we can understand that. What is very important for us at the Earth Fund is that we are very focused on accelerating the energy transition and accelerating it from a just perspective,” said Nicole Iseppi, director of energy at the BEF.
There was much backlash from labour unions, some government officials and the community around Komati after the decommissioning of the power station.
Iseppi said she thought SA was not getting a “fair report” internationally for the progress it had made on the just transition or for the level of commitment she had seen, especially from the new government of national unity (GNU), to advance the just transition.
But, she said, the country’s focus now had to shift more to delivery.
“It is now time to increase action and think bigger” with the support and collaboration that SA’s partners could provide, she said.
According to Iseppi, one of the gaps in SA’s just transition approach was on the municipal level.
Much of the burden of the just energy transition will fall to municipalities, which have been given wide-ranging responsibilities for climate change mitigation and adaptation under the Climate Change Act.
Coal-dependent provinces such as Mpumalanga also face huge job losses once coal-fired power stations and coal mines start to close.
The decision to close Komati, which was reaching the end of its 60-year operating life, was taken in 2017. Some of the generating units at the station, which was built with 1,000MW of generation capacity, were already shut down in 2018 and by 2022, when the final unit was turned off, Komati was contributing only 120MW to the grid. At the time, there were fewer than 200 permanent employees at the station, and Eskom has previously said that no permanent jobs were lost when Komati was shut down, though some contractors were affected.
However, Eskom itself has admitted that the shutdown was not properly planned and executed.
The Presidential Climate Commission (PCC) said in a 2023 report on the lessons learnt from the Komati shutdown that it also affected the livelihoods of those in the community who indirectly relied on Komati by, for example, selling food or providing accommodation to power plant workers.
One of the key findings was the late start of the process of creating new opportunities through repowering (such as installing renewable energy capacity) and repurposing (using the land and infrastructure around the power station to start new projects such as skills training or, in the case of Komati, a manufacturing business for mobile microgrids).
The training facility had been operating for more than a year and a half and was already making a difference, said Iseppi.
The facility offers training in reskilling and new skills in terms of renewables. Trainees can also receive training in practical skills such as welding that will be needed for projects such as building wind and solar farms.
“We went to Komati to speak to some of the trainees and the feedback we received from some of them is that the training they are receiving is making them feel relevant [to the just transition],” Iseppi told Business Day.
The training facility’s organisers hope that about 400 Eskom workers and community members will have received training at the facility by October.
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