South Africa: Ramaphosa Outlines Energy Action Plan

SA Presidency has released an update on progress in the implementation of the Energy Action Plan that has been drawn up to end the country’s energy crisis.

On Saturday, the government announced a series of interventions aimed at solving the country’s worsening power crisis and easing the ongoing load shedding. This comes in the wake of President Cyril Ramaphosa’s promised interventions to combat load shedding six months ago.

Through the Presidency, the National Energy Crisis Committee (Necom) was established to co-ordinate the government’s response and ensure swift implementation of the plan.

“The first contracts are expected to be signed in the coming weeks,” the Presidency said.

According to the Presidency, Ramaphosa has also engaged with different stakeholders and leaders to ensure a collective response to this national challenge.

Six power stations have been identified for particular focus over the coming months through a comprehensive Generation Recovery Plan, it said. The president has further instructed law enforcement agencies to ramp up efforts to protect electricity infrastructure.

It listed the progress steps that were reportedly taken by the President as:

• Schedule 2 of the Electricity Regulation Act has been amended to remove the licensing requirement for generation projects, which will significantly accelerate private investment.

• Since the licensing threshold was first raised to 100MW, the pipeline of private sector projects has grown to more than 100 projects with more than 9 000MW of capacity. The first of these large-scale projects are expected to connect to the grid by the end of this year.

• The Necom has instructed departments to cut red tape and streamline regulatory processes for energy projects, including reducing the timeframe for environmental authorisations to 57 days from more than 100 days. Also, to reduce the registration process from four months to three weeks and ensure that grid connection approvals are provided within six months.

• Project agreements for 19 projects from Bid Window 5 and six projects from Bid Window 6 of the renewable energy programme, representing 2 800MW of new capacity. These projects will soon proceed to construction.

• A new ministerial determination has been published for 14 771MW of new generation capacity from wind, solar and battery storage to accelerate further bid windows.

• An additional 300MW has been imported through the Southern African Power Pool, and negotiations are under way to secure a potential 1 000MW from neighbouring countries starting this year.

• Eskom has developed and launched a programme to purchase power from companies with available generation capacity through a standard offer. The first contracts are expected to be signed in the coming weeks.

• A team of independent experts has been established to work closely with Eskom to diagnose the problems at poorly performing power stations and take action to improve plant performance.