Renewable industry looks to Mantashe

There is no excuse for the government further delaying the next round of procurement for renewable energy, says Terence Govender, chair of the South African Renewable Energy Council.

“The Integrated Resource Plan [IRP] needed to be approved by cabinet and gazetted. That’s now out of the way. There’s no excuse for further delaying.”

After an almost 10-year wait since the last IRP, the government’s new long-term energy plan finally became law last week. It increases the level of renewables in the national energy mix from less than 5% to 33% by 2030.

It also warns that SA faces a four-year power gap. Govender says that the procurement of new solar and wind energy is the government’s only hope of plugging this gap any time soon.

But he says even if mineral resources & energy minister Gwede

Mantashe were to announce a new procurement round immediately, it would take at least two years for renewables to come to the rescue. “The industry is happy with the latest IRP but the IRP is only the first step in the process. Now it has to be implemented. The minister needs to make a determination.”

Had the government not ignored “pleas” made by the renewable energy sector since at least 2016, renewables would have been ready to fill the gap the government is now warning about immediately, he said, adding it should never have taken so long.

There’s about 4,000MW of renewables on the grid currently, which has greatly reduced the severity of load-shedding, Govender said.

He refused to speculate on the causes for the delay, though politics, ideology and suspicion of the private sector are all believed to be major factors.

Govender said international experience suggests that renewables could meet all the country’s energy needs.

“The technology has advanced to the extent that in some parts of the world they’re deploying 800,000MW of hybrid projects, CSP, PV, [concentrated solar power, photovoltaic] wind.”

Meanwhile, a green light from the minister would be good.