Denmark, the Netherlands and Spain have joined the Just Energy Transition Investment Plan, increasing the funding commitment to $11.8 billion.
This is according to head of the Presidency’s project management office, Rudi Dicks, who spoke at the Presidential Climate Commission briefing on Friday.
The Jet-IP gives effect to the Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP) signed at COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland two years ago. A sum of $8.5 billion had already been pledged from France, the EU, UK and USA through grants and loans.
Denmark and the Netherlands indicated interest in joining the partnership earlier this year. In June, News24 reported negotiations were under way for Denmark to join, with that country indicating it intended to raise $165 million as part of its efforts.
At the time, officials from Denmark and SA signed an amended agreement on an existing renewable energy partnership programme that dates back to 2017.
In the same official visit, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte came to SA to discuss strengthening cooperation on energy and the just transition.
In April this year, Bloomberg reported that Spain had pledged to invest $2.3 billion for the just energy transition.
Some strings attached
On Friday, Dicks said the money pledged was conditional on the implementation plan being finalised and rolled out.
It has faced some delays, however. It was originally meant to be ready in August this year, but will be presented to the PCC closer to the end of the year in the form of a draft plan.
Dicks said the draft plan will only submitted to Cabinet in November.
However, he said $600 million had been disbursed by Germany and France in the form of loans to help reform the electricity space and implement decarbonisation.
Multiple challenges – and related priority areas – have been identified in the plan. These include transmission infrastructure, municipal infrastructure, skills development for the transition, as well as investment in the green hydrogen and electric vehicle sectors.
South Africa is in desperate need of an aggressive upgrade to its transmission grid. Eskom’s latest transmission development plan assumes over 50GW will be needed by 2032, mainly from renewables. This means SA will need over 14 000km of additional high-voltage lines and to increase its transformer capacity sixfold.
It is estimated that hundreds of billions of rands will be needed to achieve this.
The JET-IP also envisions some R319 billion investment in the green hydrogen sector by 2027 and R128.1 billion investment over the next five years for EVs.
Source : News24