President Cyril Ramaphosa. Picture: GCIS
Municipalities will be given greater responsibility in the global crusade against fossil fuels.
President Cyril Ramaphosa gave an opening address at the conference on Monday aimed at determining how local municipalities will contribute to the Just Energy Transition (JET).
The Municipal JET Conference will run for two days, linking industry role-players in the renewable energy and local government administrative spheres.
The crux of the conference is to implement energy-related policies that align with South Africa’s Cop 28 and Paris Agreement obligations.
President Ramaphosa stated that together with the South African Local Government Association (Salga), the first steps toward an era of low-carbon development would be taken.
For this to happen, Salga President Bheki Stofile said R320 billion would be spent towards this transition over five years.
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Promising practical solutions and a significant role to be played by renewables, Stofile hopes this can boost local economies and make a dent in unemployment.
Minister of Electricity and Energy Kgosientsho Ramakgopa then reiterated his earlier calls for transparency and wider participation, saying that the conference would ensure the “democratisation of the process”.
The President was adamant that municipalities were central to the effort to decarbonise the energy sector.
He said 165 municipalities were electricity service providers, owning and operating half of the country’s electricity grid.
Acknowledging the already exorbitant municipal debt hampering Eskom’s operations, he said the fight against climate change would not come at a higher cost for consumers.
“The energy transition must not contribute to energy poverty,” said Ramaphosa.
“Citizens of our country must see that the JET is working for them. Businesses must see that the JET is indeed beneficial to the enterprises, whether small medium or large,” he added.
The President said current infrastructure would need to be modernised and the existing coverage extended by at least 14 000km.
“Energy generation of the future requires systems that are fundamentally different in terms of design, capability and operation,” he stated.
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Achieving these goals would be a monumental task, with Ramaphosa saying best practices would need to be implemented from top to bottom.
“The days of mediocrity, the days of doing things just because we have to do them and end up with sub-optimum results, are over. They must be over for us as a nation”.
“Our people expect us to do the best. Our people expect the best we can do for them because, indeed, they are the best themselves, inherently,” boasted the President.
Low carbon development is the goal
Ramaphosa hailed the role already played by independent energy producers, acknowledging the 2200 megawatts added to the grid by 130 power projects nationwide.
To date, Ramaphosa said R200 billion had been attracted in investment from these and incoming projects.
When it came to investment made by the state, Ramaphosa repeated the mantra of South Africa’s energy future being done at “pace, scale and cost” relative to the country’s needs.
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