SA loves to talk about “youth empowerment.” We host summits, launch task teams and deliver speeches about the potential of our young people. But here’s the uncomfortable truth: if we don’t take climate change and reducing carbon emissions seriously — urgently — then all that talk is meaningless. You can’t empower young people on a scorched, water-stressed, energy-insecure economy. No planet, no prospects.
The climate clock isn’t just ticking; it’s sprinting. Global greenhouse gas emissions hit a record of about 53 gigatons CO₂-equivalent in 2023, up almost 2% from the year before. Fossil CO₂ emissions climbed again in 2024. Academic assessments now estimate the remaining global carbon budget for staying under 1.5°C of warming at only three to six years at current burn rates. That’s not “plenty of time to act” — that’s an eye-blink in policy terms. It’s the difference between a liveable future and one where extreme heat, failed harvests and infrastructure collapse define daily life.
SA is already warming at roughly twice the global average. We’re seeing it in longer droughts, more frequent flooding, and the devastation of communities like those in KwaZulu-Natal in 2022, where deadly floods destroyed homes, schools and livelihoods. Each climate disaster isn’t just an environmental loss — it’s a direct hit to economic stability, job security and the future of today’s youth.
Yet our economy remains one of the most coal-dependent in the world, and our pace in transitioning to renewables is slow compared to nations with far fewer resources. The longer we cling to the illusion that incremental changes will suffice, the deeper the crisis we pass on to the next generation. And make no mistake — they are already inheriting a tough deal.
The youth unemployment rate in SA sits at 46.1% for people aged 15-34 years old. That’s 4.8-million young South Africans without jobs. Meanwhile, our population continues to grow, reaching 63-million in 2024, with more young people entering a labour market that cannot absorb them. The cruel irony? We have one of the largest youth unemployment rates in the world, at the very moment our economy is at its most fragile.
This is where climate action becomes youth policy. Around the world, countries that have made decarbonisation a core economic strategy are also building real, tangible opportunities for young people.
Take Germany. According the International Labour Organisation, by tying climate targets to an industrial jobs push, the country has created a surge in renewable energy employment. In 2023 roughly 276,000 people were employed in renewables, and energy-transition job ads have more than doubled since 2019, reaching 372,500 in 2024. Many of these roles are in “green skills” industries that didn’t exist a decade ago — from offshore wind technicians to battery-storage engineers — and they’re attracting younger workers in droves.
Morocco offers another case study. Its investment in enormous solar projects such as Noor Ouarzazate — one of the largest in the world — is not only reducing emissions but creating long-term employment and skills-transfer opportunities, particularly for youth and women. These are stable, future-proof jobs in industries that are projected to grow for decades.
And then there’s Kenya, whose thriving off-grid solar and solar-irrigation sector is providing hundreds of thousands of livelihoods across East Africa. These aren’t just jobs in Nairobi — they’re distributed across rural and peri-urban areas, bringing income and resilience to communities that have long been excluded from the formal economy.
Globally, renewable energy already employs millions. According to the International Renewable Energy Agency, in 2023 solar PV alone accounted for 7.1-million jobs worldwide. Every one of these jobs is in a sector that actively works to secure the future of the planet — and therefore the future of the youth.
So why isn’t SA racing to do the same? We have the sunlight, the wind corridors, the land and the young workforce. We also have an electricity crisis so acute that it should be the perfect justification for a full-throttle clean-energy rollout. Yet we continue to treat the green economy as a side project rather than the main event.
The maths is simple: replace the grid with renewables such as micro-grids, electrify transport, invest in large-scale battery storage, fast-track permitting for clean-energy projects and train young South Africans to fill those jobs first. Do it at speed and scale, and we create the largest youth-employment pipeline this country has ever seen — while slashing emissions and building resilience.
This isn’t just idealism. The Climate Action Tracker has noted SA’s movement on sectoral carbon budgets and renewables. But the test is whether we act fast enough to match the scale of the crisis. Every year we delay, the carbon budget shrinks, the climate shocks intensify and the green-jobs boom we could lead gets built elsewhere.
We have to be blunt with ourselves and honest with the youth: every tonne of carbon we fail to cut now is a weight they will have to carry later — in the form of food insecurity, joblessness and climate disasters. You can’t mentor a graduate through a flood. You can’t incubate a start-up through stage 6 load-shedding. You can’t talk about economic inclusion while the very resources that sustain life — water, arable land, stable weather — are collapsing.
And here’s the part policymakers often miss: climate action isn’t a cost to youth empowerment; it’s the single most important investment in it. When we decarbonise, we’re not just protecting the environment — we’re building industries, careers and communities that will last. When we restore land, protect water sources and back renewable energy entrepreneurs, we’re creating the conditions for young people to thrive.
So let’s drop the empty rhetoric. Put climate at the centre of youth policy: cut emissions fast, build clean industries faster and hire and train young people first. Otherwise, “youth empowerment” will be remembered as just another hollow political phrase — one that looked great on a conference banner while the planet burnt outside.
You can’t empower youth on a dead planet. And if we don’t act now that’s exactly the future we’re handing them.
• Venter is CEO of Zero Carbon Charge Holdings.
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