Global Markers in South Africa’s Just Energy Transition

The report examines South Africa's transition from a coal-dependent energy system to renewable sources, emphasizing the need for a 'just' transition that integrates decarbonization with social justice and industrialization. It analyzes the role of the Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP), the challenges of the national grid, the financial vulnerabilities of municipalities, and the potential for domestic and international climate finance to support the transition.

• South Africa's energy crisis is driven by a combination of poor policy choices, governance failures, corruption, and an ageing fleet of coal-fired power stations that are increasingly expensive to maintain, resulting in frequent load-shedding.
• The report identifies four distinct narratives for a Just Energy Transition (JET): decarbonization with 'trickle down' effects; decarbonization with social mitigation; decarbonization combined with social mitigation and upstream green industrialization; and a radical socio-economic transformation focusing on 'energy democracy'.
• South Africa's Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP) represents a shift toward the third narrative, integrating decarbonization with green industrialization in sectors such as green hydrogen and electric vehicles.
• The national electricity grid is a critical bottleneck; there is a spatial disconnect between the coal fleet in Mpumalanga and the renewable energy potential in the north-west, and the current build rate of 0.7GW per year is insufficient to meet the 4-5GW annual requirement for a secure system by 2030.
• Municipalities face a financial crisis because they rely on electricity sales surpluses to fund services for poor households, a model now threatened by the rise of private embedded generation and Eskom price increases.
• The total infrastructure investment required to transition South Africa from coal to renewables is estimated at over $250 billion, with the JET Investment Plan (JET IP) specifically estimating a need for $98.7 billion between 2023 and 2027.
• There is significant potential to fund the transition through South African pension funds; deploying just 5% of the ZAR 2.3 trillion in pension assets would provide approximately ZAR 130 billion, matching the COP26 political commitment.
• The Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme (REIPPPP) has successfully attracted investment and created 55,217 jobs for 5GW of capacity by June 2018, but it has been hindered by political opposition to private ownership and state capture within Eskom.

APA

SWILLING, M., JACOB, M. R., MCCALLUM, W., RICHARDS, N., CLOETE, D., & JENTEL, L. (2023). Global Markers in South Africa’s Just Energy Transition. South African Institute of International Affairs. https://saiia.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/SAIIA_Futures__SR1_GlobalMarkersSA.pdf

Chicago

SWILLING, MARK, MERIN RAJU JACOB, WENDY MCCALLUM, NICHOLA RICHARDS, DEON CLOETE, and LETITIA JENTEL. Global Markers in South Africa’s Just Energy Transition. South African Institute of International Affairs, 2023. https://saiia.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/SAIIA_Futures__SR1_GlobalMarkersSA.pdf.

Wikipedia

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BibTeX

@techreport{swilling2023global, author = {SWILLING, MARK and JACOB, MERIN RAJU and MCCALLUM, WENDY and RICHARDS, NICHOLA and CLOETE, DEON and JENTEL, LETITIA}, title = {{Global Markers in South Africa’s Just Energy Transition}}, institution = {South African Institute of International Affairs}, year = {2023}, month = oct, url = {https://saiia.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/SAIIA_Futures__SR1_GlobalMarkersSA.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }