Renewables: SA needs 8GW a year

• President’s panel says it’s quickest way out of crisis

An ambitious rollout of solar and wind power that will increase the share of renewables in SA’s energy mix from 7% to 40% by 2030 offers the quickest route out of the electricity crisis. This is also the cheapest option for building the type of energy sector SA needs in order to stick to its global climate commitments, according to the Presidential Climate Commission (PCC).

The PCC, which was established in 2020 by President Cyril Ramaphosa to advise on matters such as the just energy transition, on Thursday published a set of recommendations on electricity planning in SA.

SA should, the PCC said, aim to get a least 8GW of wind and solar power onto the grid every year for the next two to four years just to resolve the loadshedding crisis. While it is an ambitious goal, recent experience suggests it can be achieved

— about 2.5GW of new renewable energy projects were registered with the National Energy Regulator of SA during the first three months of 2023.

Ultimately, the country needs to add between 50GW and 60GW of renewables by 2030. This would bring the share of renewables in SAs ’ energy mix to about 40%, said Steve Nicholls, head of mitigation at the PCC and climate change adviser to the National Business Initiative.

According to the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, in 2022 coal-fired power accounted for about 80% of electricity generated and renewables (excluding hydro) accounted for 7%.

The PCC drafted the recommendations in response to a call by the department of mineral resources & energy for input on the revision of the 2019 Integrated Resource Plan (IRP), which the department intends to present to the cabinet during the second half of the year.

The IRP 2019 maps out SA’s electricity procurement plan up to 2030, mandating the decommissioning of about 12GW of coal-fired power by 2030 and the expansion of 18GW of private sector-led renewables in the same time frame.

But the recommendations from the PCC suggest that 18GW of renewables would not come close to meeting SA’s energy needs by 2030.

In its recommendations for a revised plan the PCC calls for an IRP that “maximises renewable energy available on the grid”.

“[The] PCC believes that we should be accelerating renewable energy generation construction early. If we adopt ambitious and clear goals in line with our development and just transition objectives, the PCC expects a policy adjusted IRP to promote approximately 50GW to 60GW of variable renewable energy by 2030, supported by co-located [battery] storage, and between 3GW and 5GW of

peaking support [from gas, for example]”, said Dr Crispian Olver, the commission’s executive director.

The PCC’s recommendations are based on extensive consultations and a review of 15 scenarios across three critical energy modelling studies done in SA.

“Regardless of the assumptions used in the different scenarios, all the models build renewables, storage, and peaking support as their least-cost solutions. They do not build new coal. They do not use nuclear,” said Nicholls.

The PCC commented on the government’s plans to extend the life of old coal-fired power stations as an emergency measure to fill the growing gap in power supply, saying that given SA’s immediate energy crisis, shifting the decommissioning date for end-of-life coal-fired power stations by one or two years will not have major implications for SA’s climate commitments. However, extending the closure of coal plants by more than two years will put SA’s ability to meets its carbon emissions reduction target at risk, and there are cheaper options, such as building renewables, that could fill that gap, he said.

In its revised nationally determined contribution (NDC) submitted at the international climate change conference COP26, SA committed to reduce carbon emissions to a target range of 350-million tonnes to 420-million tonnes of carbon dioxide-equivalent by 2030 a reduction of about 20%-33% from current emissions.

Implementing the PCC’s electricity planning recommendations would put SA on track to meet the lower end of the NDC, Nicholls said.

One of the greatest constraints to an accelerated rollout of renewables is the current limitations to grid access in some parts of the country.

“There is not a lot of grid capacity in the Northern Cape, but there is more available in Gauteng and Mpumalanga.

“We can start by focusing on areas where there is immediately available grid capacity,” Nicholls said.

To get to the target of between 50GW and 60GW of renewables SA would have to implement Eskom’s transmission development plan, according to which about R130bn needs to be spent on building 100 new substations and 8,500km of transmission lines by 2030.

Olver said the PCC has not yet received a formal response from the government on the recommendations.

“The president did indicate that government would take these recommendations seriously and study them very carefully. There will probably not be unanimity in [the] government around these recommendations, but we do think there are areas in which we can agree.

“As a short-term solution to the energy crisis, we must look at what we can get to market in a least-cost manner within two to three years. This solution aligns closely with what we are saying, which is wind, solar, battery storage and some form of peaking power — I doubt there will be much dispute around that.”