Germany only too happy to share energy ideals
GOING green? Wunderbar!
Do you know any German words that work in the English language? Kitsch? Kraut? Kaputt?
There is one German term I really enjoy hearing across the globe – and particularly here in South Africa. It certainly has a nicer annotation than its linguistic bedfellows Schadenfreude, Angst or Realpolitik. It is the term “Energiewende”.
That term stands for our country’s transition towards renewable energies. Many of the Energiewende’s ideas have travelled abroad and have been taken on by other countries – also here in South Africa. What is crucial to me is that the term describes a process, a path that we in Germany started about a decade ago but which is still incomplete. We are still learning. We have had successes but we have also encountered setbacks. That’s why we are very happy to share our experiences with our South African partners.
I have read the draft of the Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) 2018 with great interest. The plan is currently being discussed in Parliament. With the IRP, South Africa is setting out an ambitious roadmap, aiming to shift its energy production towards clean and more sustainable generation, with the focus on renewable energy and gas.
By 2030, the country aims to increase renewable capacity to about 24 gigawatts. Against the backdrop of South Africa’s current energy infrastructure, which is mainly based on coal-fired plants, this is a very ambitious target. But I am positive about the country’s ability to reach that goal and to even go beyond that in the years to come.
To get there, investment in energy infrastructure will be needed. This will not only create jobs, it will also help South Africa reach the commitments made in the 2015 Paris Agreement and to achieve its vision to become an environmentally sustainable, low-carbon climate resilient economy.
Compared to my own – rather grey – country, the conditions in South Africa for a renewables revolution are bright. Here in South Africa, the sun shines for eight hours almost every day. Radiation intensity is much higher compared to Germany. The same goes for wind power conditions – they are steady and extremely expedient in many parts of the country. The basic requirements for renewable energies could hardly be better.
Moreover, the potential to save energy through measures to enhance energy efficiency is also huge. Every unit of energy that can be saved does not need to be generated.
It puzzles me that many peoples still treat green energy and climate protection as a luxury, a nice-to-have. Nothing could be further from the truth. We not only need to transform our energy provision to protect our planet. Energy transformation also makes compelling economic sense.
We can already see the effects in Germany, where the Energiewende has resulted in the creation of a new sector, with more than 370 000 jobs. It boosted the efficient mass production of renewable energy technologies, leading to economies of scale and substantial price drops worldwide. And the dynamics have increased since, with investments in new wind farms, solar and biogas plants. Today, renewables account for almost a third of the electric power generated in my country.
But we can also already see effects in South Africa: through the different projects of the renewable energy programme (REIPPPP), for instance, around 35 000 jobs have been created.
We have been supporting these efforts through the German-South African Energy Partnership and a broad range of co-operation programmes in the energy and climate field. These include the strengthening of energy transmission and distribution networks to integrate renewables into the grid, or the promotion of energy efficiency measures. We have also established a special facility to empower domestic small and medium companies (SMEs) to compete in the local renewable energy market.
Germany stands ready to build on these strong channels of co-operation.
I am convinced: renewables mean growth. They mean jobs. They mean investment in our future.
The path is long – and there will likely be periods of both sunshine and clouds along the way. We are looking forward to walking that path together with our South African partners – whatever the weather conditions may be. If we succeed, the outcome stands to be best described with another favourite German word of mine: “Wunderbar!”
Martin Schaefer is the German Ambassador.