- RES4Africa Foundation widens its field of action by welcoming CSIR and Nedbank: joining a network of excellence from across the European renewable energy value chain, the leading research centre based in Pretoria and the financial giant of Sandton are the first South African organisations to take part in the assembly of RES4Africa members.
- Their membership was approved and made official by RES4Africa’s Steering Committee, following a solid working relationship established between RES4Africa, CSIR and Nedbank over the past few months.
South Africa is the largest electricity market in Africa; despite the successful initiation of a renewable energy transition, today South Africa’s power sector is experiencing some challenges. The country’s economy is dependent on the extraction and export of coal, and its electricity demand has been weak and negatively influenced by frequent supply shortages, rising tariffs and lower economic growth.
Moreover, its generation mix is based on increasingly older plants, which reduces the reliability of supply, while new generation capacity addition has been slow to materialise despite the approval of the 2019 Integrated Resource Plan that sets out a clear policy for the increased deployment of renewable energy sources.
South Africa’s renewable resource wealth offers tremendous opportunities for clean and sustainable power generation, which is expected to play a key role in addressing the supply demand imbalance and supporting economic growth and prosperity in the region.
“The challenges that South Africa’s power sector is experiencing offer the opportunity to scale up the deployment of renewable energy, which has the potential to ensure a more reliable and sustainable electricity service, at a fairer price” states Salvatore Bernabei, President of the RES4Africa Foundation, “With its partners in South Africa, RES4Africa is carrying out a dedicated programme focused on the country’s energy transformation. We therefore gladly welcome CSIR and Nedbank as partners, a tangible result of the positive collaborations we’ve established over the past months”.
Author: Bryan Groenendaal
