Wind power group wants to help power SA recovery
The SA Wind Energy Association, which counts General Electric and Enel Green Power among its members, is calling on the government and financiers to place clean energy at the heart of post-Covid 19 stimulus measures.
The association on Tuesday said it is pushing for a “green economic recovery plan”, which should consider renewable energy as one of the main components of the government’s economic stimulus package after the Covid-19 pandemic and nationwide lockdown.
In his address on April 21, President Cyril Ramaphosa said substantial infrastructure build programmes would form part of stimulus measures to combat the economic devastation of the Covid-19 lockdown.
The association said green power projects should form part of such measures as they will not only generate jobs in the short term but can also contribute to a lasting economic recovery while easing SA’s electricity supply constraints.
The government’s green power initiative — the Renewable Energy Independent Power Producers Procurement Programme (REIPPP) — has already attracted more than R200bn in investment.
The association said renewable energy is well positioned to play an important role in SA’s economic recovery as it is infrastructure investment that does not require government capital investment.
The association “would like to call on government, intergovernmental bodies and lending institutions to put clean energy investments at the centre of their economic recovery and economic stimulus packages by implementing regulations that are fit for purpose”, CEO Ntombifuthi Ntuli said.
These included market designs that provide long-term price visibility and streamlined permitting that enables fast deployment of renewables.
The association said the first step to achieve this should be to fast-track the process for the National Energy Regulator of SA (Nersa) to provide concurrence with draft ministerial determinations that will enable the mineral resources & energy department to proceed with plans to procure new generation capacity in line with the Integrated Resource Plan (IRP), SA’s energy road map.
On Friday, mineral resources & energy minister Gwede Mantashe gazetted regulations that permit Nersa licensing staff to return to work.
Wind power has the largest growth in the IRP, and Ntuli said the procurement of new wind capacity should be fast-tracked to deliver energy to the grid by 2022 in line with stipulations.
“Wind energy alone has attracted some R80bn in investment since 2012.
“Ramping up installed wind capacity by 1,600MW per annum, as allocated in the IRP 2019, would create additional annual investments of about R40bn a year, which will help to deliver jobs, clean and affordable power and energy security needed for a sustainable economic recovery,” the association said. Clean power could play a further role if the regulatory hurdles preventing the private sector from freely purchasing renewable energy were removed.
Dylan Baxter, head of sales at Raizcorp, a business incubator, said the REIPPP includes significant job creation, social upliftment and economic transformation targets, primarily through broader economic ownership.
Independent power producers “cannot just come into an area, put up a solar or wind farm, and reap the benefits. They have to make a real difference to the communities around their operations, especially in a postCovid-19 world. The benefits are already being seen in rural communities in the Northern Cape and the Eastern Cape, where local people are providing basic services like maintenance and catering to IPPs,” he said.
“There is a huge opportunity in our rural areas for big businesses to make a difference and bring entire communities into the formal economy in the process.”