RICHARD HALSEY: Turn off the gas and focus on cleaner, cheaper alternatives
The South African government’s plan to develop a gas-fired power industry brings both economic and climate change mitigation risks. Furthermore, investors in gas projects may need to absorb substantial economic losses, as the risk that fossil fuel assets will fail to make a return on investment is escalating rapidly.
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Just Energy Transition Partnerships and How They Work
To limit the damage caused by climate change, the world needs to rapidly reduce carbon dioxide emissions everywhere, not just in rich countries. To get there, poor and middle-income places will require trillions of dollars for replacing coal plants with cleaner energy, improving electrical grids and retraining workers, among other measures. Just Energy Transition Partnerships, or JETPs, are among the most high-profile financing mechanisms designed to funnel money from wealthy economies to some of the bigger developing-world emitters for the purpose of weaning off fossil fuels. South Africa signed the first agreement in 2021, and a handful of others are getting off the ground, including in Indonesia. But the process has been slow and politically fraught, raising the question of whether such flagship plans can be inclusive, effective and timely enough to fulfill their promise.
Richard Halsey: Revised electricity infrastructure plan must admit benefits of energy storage
As the government concludes a much-delayed revision of the Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) for electricity infrastructure there is one technology that can offer multiple benefits to SA's struggling power system and shouldn’t be underrepresented in the new proposal—energy storage. Strategically located energy storage can help optimise the use of the existing transmission grid. While this is just one of many benefits it can provide, it is an important one for the government to factor in when deciding how much storage capacity to procure at the national level.