Appetite for coal

South Africa depends on coal. It gets 90 percent of its electricity from the fossil fuel, of which it has large, easy-to-reach deposits.

In fact, coal is so plentiful and cheap, that South Africa even produces gasoline out of it - a relict from apartheid times, when the internationally-ostracized regime sought to free itself from imports.

Even relative to energy-hungry rich countries, South Africa has a problem with the trajectory of its carbon emissions.

It produces 7.4 tons of CO2 equivalent per capita each year - even more than Europeans like the French and the Swiss.

Compared to its neighborhood, the difference is even clearer: South Africa emits five times more greenhouse gases than Namibia, and a full 70 times more than Mozambique.

Solar thermal investment

Germany is trying to help South Africans change this.

"We now have the opportunity to help South Africa move away from coal," said Harald Gerding, director of the South African office of Entwicklungsbank KfW, a German development bank..

With 75 billion euros of reduced-interest loans, the KfW is supporting construction of a solar array in Upington in the country's Northern Cape province.

The facility should produce up to 100 megawatts of environmentally friendlier electricity by 2017.

The technology consists of mirrors concentrating light onto a tower, which heats a liquid into gas that powers turbines.

The solar thermal plant would be among the largest in the world. It's one of several projects to which South African President Jacob Zuma referred when making the promise to reduce expected greenhouse gases in his country by one-third by 2020.

South Africa is not paying mere "lip service," said energy minister Elizabeth Dipuo Peters in vowing to uphold the promise. If all goes according to plan, the country will soon have the most wind turbines and solar panels in Sub-Saharan Africa.

"We'll have about 18 gigawatts of renewable energy by 2030," said Trade Minister Rob Davies, "That's a large and ambitious goal."

Energy targets

According to the government, the state-owned utility Eskom plans to double its total generating capacity to 80 000 Megawats over the next two decades, with nuclear power making up about half of the new capacity. Aside from state utility Eskom, private energy firms are supposed to step in to build up renewables.

By 2025, coal is supposed to shrink from supplying nearly 90 percent to supplying 70 percent of the country's power.

In Durban, South Africa said which energy companies had won contracts in the first round of bidding for wind and solar projects.

Those companies will enjoy subsidies and reduced-interest loans, a second bidding round will follow in 2012.

Foreign partners with the South African Renewables Initiative are also helping the country with its gradual withdrawal from coal.

These include the governments of Germany, Denmark, Great Britain and Norway, along with the European Investment Bank, which want to make 1.9 billion dollars available for such projects.

"It's very important to develop renewables here," said Norway's Energy Minister Erik Solheim. "South Africa is the single African nation south of the Sahara with significant per-capita greenhouse gas emissions."

Drawn-out withdrawal

Besides developing renewables, the South African government is also positioning itself to save energy: It wants to be the first African country using only energy-efficient light bulbs as of 2016.

Yet even if this occurs, emissions will likely remain high in the next decades because South Africa is intent on meeting its energy needs independent of imports from neighbors like Mozambique.

"We're adding capacity to cover the rising demand," emphasized Ayanda Nakedi, general manager at the state utility Eskom.

And despite the push for renewables, construction of new coal plants in South Africa is set to continue.

The best available technology is supposed to be implemented at the two largest coal plants, Medupi and Kosile. Each has a capacity of 4.8 gigawatts, more than all renewable energy projects planned for the whole year.

Nakedi dispelled all doubt about the future of these projects.

"We can't just throw away the coal. That's the resource we have here."

Author: Johannes Beck / sad
Editor: Sonya Diehn