By Toyin Akinosho
South Africa’s Electricity and Energy Deputy Minister, Samantha Graham-Maré, has provided an update on the country’s plan to use the manufacturing of components of renewable energy equipment as a route to high grading its industrialisation process.
Africa’s most industrialised economy wants to position itself as a supplier of renewable-energy components to the rest of the continent, she said.
The basic outline of the Renewable Energy Masterplan (SAREM) is a roadmap to stimulating domestic industrial activities aligned with South Africa’s deployment of solar PV, wind and green hydrogen, Graham- Maré explained.
She admitted that “while trying to compete against the likes of China for solar panels is wildly optimistic, we know that we are capable of developing systems for the manufacture of components in the solar, wind and green hydrogen spaces”.
Like several of the country’s energy related development initiatives, SAREM has stayed a while in the implementation tray. The plan’s approval process had been awaited for more than two years, the Deputy Minister acknowledged. Now that the plan is walking through the Cabinet Committee process, Ms. Graham-Maré said that it should be adopted “within the month”.
That does not mean it is at the point of implementation. South Africa has a way of keeping conversations going around plans, roadmaps, legislations, and ‘determinations’, without the deliverables of those initiatives actually happening. There has been several iterations of the Upstream Petroleum Resources Development Bill (Upstream Bill) passing through parliament, observing endless debates without any traction. There have been copious announcements about Gas Utilisation Master Plan (GUMP) which are never implemented.
This may be different. The country has a strong Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme (REIPPPP), which has seen over 7,000MW of solar and wind powered electricity connected to the grid over the last 10 years. The REIPPPP has a strong local content element. This is a good place to plug in SAREM.
