WWF-SA investigates the roll-out of renewable energy

South Africa's current electricity crisis has led to the World Wide Fund for Nature South Africa (WWF-SA) to see an opportunity for the country to transform to a more adaptive energy and electricity system.

27 Jul 2015

WWF-SA investigates the roll-out of renewable energy

To this end WWF-SA has spent considerable time investigating some of the issues relating to the large-scale roll-out of renewable energy (RE).
These are explored in the following newly released reports:

A review of the local community development requirements in South Africa's renewable energy procurement programme responds to concerns over the roll-out of the socio-economic development (SED) component of renewable energy independent power producer procurement (REIPPP) projects. It examines the policy requirements and initial implementation experiences of the REIPPP, the emerging evidence of local community development schemes established by the RE industry and proposes steps to overcome the emerging challenges.
Feasibility of the WWF Renewable Energy Vision 2030 - South Africa: A spatial-temporal analysis considers the ability of the electricity grid to absorb additional RE generated power. The report follows WWF-SA's Renewable Energy Vision 2030, which calls for an increase in the percentage of RE generation capacity into the South African system from the 6-9% share proposed by the IRP2010 update to WWF's proposed 11-19% of generation capacity from RE sources by 2030.
Using this as a starting point, this new report tests the techno-economic feasibility and merits of the vision report scenarios, finding them not only feasible but offering economic advantages and higher resilience to changes in electricity demand and fuel price volatility, without major infrastructure upgrades to the grid required.
Concentrated Solar Power: A strategic industrial development opportunity for South Africa considers the ripe opportunity frontier technologies such as concentrated solar power (CSP) offer industrial development. Within the beneficial framework of an environmentally sustainable development paradigm, industrial development of new technologies for which there is growing global demand offers South Africa a chance to become a competitive manufacturer of an important frontier green technology.

The report highlights the need for a coordinated policy approach, aligned industrial and innovation policy, financing and partnerships with developed countries as the necessary ingredients to realise such an opportunity.