- The UK has approved £330 000 in funding to facilitate a study by the Energy Council of South Africa, largely considered to be a fossil fuel lobby group with a D+ influence rating on energy policy.
- It is also chaired by the head of the country’s biggest air polluter, Sasol.
- The announcement was made during a visit to Cape Town by UK Special Representative for Climate, Rachel Kyte.
The Presidency in South Africa recently raised concern over the appointment of Bain & Co by the Energy Council of South Africa. A British consultancy, Bain was banned from doing any business in South Africa in 2022 for a period of 10 years for its role in orchestrating the capture of the country’s Revenue Service. The Energy Council of South Africa appointed Bain to assist with its project management office six weeks ago on a pro-bono basis – without making a formal announcement at the time. They quickly cancelled the appointment.
“As part of the Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP), the UK is supporting South Africa to speed up the liberalisation of the energy sector, achieve emissions reductions and provide the energy needed to grow South Africa’s economy and provide jobs,” said Kyte in a statement issued by the British High Commission.
The study will be conducted by a consultancy and includes:
- a ten-year tariff and scenario modelling
- benchmarks from other countries, such as Brazil
- a clarification of the financial, regulatory, and institutional capacity risks
- an identification of the legal gaps that persist
- an assessment of the financial instruments needed to support the market.
Kyte did not specify which consultancy firm will be carrying out the study, but it is likely to be another British owned company.
Sasol’s Synfuels plant in Secunda, South Africa, is the largest single-source point of emissions on the planet. The emissions from the plant exceed the individual totals of more than 100 countries. Image credit: GBA
The Energy Council was launched in November 2021 under the auspices of Fleetwood Grobler, then CEO of Sasol, and then Minister of Mineral and Petroleum Resources Gwede Mantashe. Purporting to represent “the unified voice of energy”, its founding members comprised four large fossil fuel companies (Sasol, Exxaro, Eskom and TotalEnergies), Anglo American Platinum, the Industrial Development Corporation, the Central Energy Fund and the Automotive Business Council, Naamsa.
As of February 2025, the Energy Council’s membership has expanded to include a wider range of companies, but its leadership remains heavily tied to the fossil fuel industry. Eight of its 11 board members either currently represent the fossil fuel industry or have spent most of their careers working for fossil fuel companies or in high-emitting industries.
Simon Baloyi – Chief Executive Officer of Sasol and Chair of the Energy Council of South Africa. Image credit: Sasol
The Energy Council has especially strong ties to Sasol, one of the world’s biggest corporate air polluters: in addition to being founded by Fleetwood Grobler, until recently its offices were in Sasol’s headquarters, and Grobler’s replacement as Sasol CEO, Simon Baloyi, has also taken over Grobler’s chairmanship of the Council. Board members Rekha Sinath, currently at Remgro, and Oliver Naidy of Vopak, each spent more than 20 years working for Sasol.
The Energy Council describes itself as playing a “leading role in engaging the NECOM to help deliver the Presidential Energy Action Plan (EAP)” and a “key role in supporting the broader business-government partnership and CEO pledge, being led by Business Unity South Africa (BUSA) and Business for South Africa (B4SA)”.
NECOM’s mandate has recently been expanded, or “repurposed”, to accelerate the implementation of the government’s Energy Action Plan and to focus on “system-wide” energy constraints.
This gives the Energy Council unprecedented access to the development and implementation of South Africa’s energy policy, without the transparency that such processes would be subjected to under ordinary democratic policy-making.
LobbyMap, a platform “tracking the policy engagement on climate change” of corporates and industry associations around the world, has added an assessment of the Energy Council of South Africa for the first time, assigning it a score of D+ out of a possible A-F.
Despite the Energy Council’s assertion of support for climate action in its top-line messaging, LobbyMap points to its strong opposition to the carbon tax and its advocacy for the role of gas as a transition fuel, and for investment in new gas infrastructure. These positions undermine South Africa’s ability to achieve a just transition to a low-carbon, sustainable economy.
Author: Bryan Groenendaal
