The ratio between green energy and brown energy in South Africa needs to move very rapidly in favour of green energy, says Climate Adaptation Lead to the South African Presidential Climate Commission and Institute for Security Studies Africa senior research associate Dhesigen Naidoo.

Naidoo was speaking during a Canada-hosted webinar organised by law firm Fasken and covered by Engineering News & Mining Weekly. Also taking part in the webinar on the topic of the transition from brown to green energy and its impact on the South African mining industry were Johannesburg partner and moderator Mmaphuti Morolong, a member of Fasken’s global mining group, Department of Mineral Resources and Energy director-general Advocate Thabo Mokoena, Nedbank energy finance principal Sanjeev Mungroo and Fasken Johannesburg partner Francois Joubert.

Naidoo drew attention to the stark current impact of climate change on the world outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) working group.

He spoke of it being explicit that more than 3.6-billion people in the world today, including many in South Africa and certainly many more in the Southern African region, had already been adversely affected by climate change, and that the secretary-general of the UN talked about the IPCC report as being an atlas of human suffering.

“We cannot ignore this,” Naidoo said.

Differentiated responsibility was not only a global phenomenon. It was also a regional phenomenon, he added in highlighting the comparison between South Africa and its neighbouring countries, and the relative impact of greenhouse-gas emissions of each of these countries on climate change in the region.

“In fact, it’s fair to say that the loss and damage discussions are going to be very difficult. A lot depends on how fast the world moves because that will have implications for where South Africa and countries like South Africa see themselves.

“If you look at the ambitious targets of very high emitters in the developing world, like China and India, they are giving us a strong indication of where some of those players are going, and we should not be too far behind.

“The issue of the just transition is a very important one. It is a recognition that the South African economy by and large operates on the mineral-energy nexus. We can philosophise about it if we want to, but that is the grim reality.

“It is the core of our economy, it is the core of our financial system, it is a very important mechanism for livelihoods for a fair number of people,” said Naidoo.

“The key point I want to make is that we need to move towards the diversification of energy very rapidly. This is not the same as giving up on brown energy altogether but the ratio between green energy and brown energy needs to move very rapidly in favour of green energy.

“But recognising all of this, the Presidential Climate Commission is investing in the just transition framework which the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy (DMRE) is taking care of but there’s a much bigger transition that needs to be engaged around the socioeconomic movement and, as we speak, the first of the consultation workshops on that just transition is happening in eMalahleni today, because the reality is that people are in a particular circumstance.

“In our quest to move towards decarbonisation, we can’t deliver a double whammy, particularly to the poor and vulnerable in those places.

The concept of restorative justice is a very strong prevailing factor in that engagement and the idea is to develop either a formula or a series of formulas and interventions that organise for those people who are currently highly dependent on the fossil fuel value chain, and the coal value chain in particular, to not be worse off in the future than they are now, that there must be a transitionary element around it, including things such as skills and reorientation and movement to green industries, reorganising for the most arable agricultural land in Mpumalanga to return to agriculture.

“But in a transition process also talking about issues like income grants to tide over a particular period.

“After the series of first-level workshops that we’re having, and there are nine planned, we will then sit down again in that transition and start consolidating how this needs to inform both national policy as well as national legislation because the Climate Bill will have its place in the House this year and will become the Climate Act in 2022,” said Naidoo.

Joubert emphasised that South Africa is not an isolated island. “We’ve been part of the international community for a very long time. We’re a frontrunner in many of the legislative frameworks around the world, specifically geared at the very objective of why we need to move from brown to green.

“If you break it down and look at the commitments from the South African government perspective in terms of multilateral environmental agreements, the commitments from the South African government perspective in terms of environmental agreements and conventions, we are signatory to almost all, if not all, related to a cleaner and safe environment.

“What we’re trying to do is to look at being a good global citizen. We have committed to those conventions and one of the cornerstones of each convention is to say now that you have signed it and ratified it, go forth and implement in your own jurisdiction, make it work in your own country,” said Joubert.

“If one just looks at that concept, our Constitution at the end of all that governs human rights in South Africa, and has a provision that says our people have a right to an environment that is not detrimental to their health and well-being and that right must be protected through reasonable legislative measures. For instance, the National Environmental Management and National Water Acts and every other legislative instrument that governs an aspect of sustainable development.

“What is good for a developed country that has had 200 years of industrial development and has used the very same resource that is now a swear word is a little bit unjust and it is a little bit unfair to say that you must immediately change your ways.

“However, as a South African and being regulated by legislative frameworks, we all need to try and achieve the global goals, reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions and air pollution, and more reliable and affordable supply of green energy, and we need to look at that, and we can’t say we are absolved from our obligations, because we signed and ratified them.

“We looked at the Paris Agreement and we said we are going to be one of the players that contribute to a global dispensation of a greener planet. From a South African perspective, we need to then culminate into national, provincial, and local legislative frameworks what is to be achieved on a global level,” Joubert added.

“The national Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment is the focal point of climate change in terms of climate change adaption planning, because what drives brown to green effectively is climate change, with provincial and local governments having concurrent responsibilities of developing and implementing adaption strategies and plans.

“Three key climate change adaption institutional structures in the climate change arena have been brought forward and those are the recently published Climate Change Bill as well as the formation of a Presidential Climate Change Coordinating Commission, the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Climate Change, and the provincial forums.

“They are all designed to improve both the coherence and the coordination as well as the implementation of adaption responses across government sectors and that culminates in a practical and implementable regime for fellow South Africans.

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On whether the transition should have a stick or a carrot approach, Joubert said experience had shown that the stick approach was not really the right approach, especially where real impacts on people’s lives are involved.

Financial Perspective

“As a country, as a human being and as a financial institution, there was no doubt that what was needed for the country was sustainable, affordable and reliable access to energy,” said Mungroo.

“With that undertone, we must look at the fundamentals in our power sector, acknowledging firstly that from an energy perspective we are one of the largest contributors of greenhouse-gas emissions. There’s a lack of adequate generation capacity to meet the demand in-country and, at a global level the need to do this transition right, not just because of climate change, but in the country, on the continent, that the benefits are widely spread across the socioeconomic spectrum,” he added.

“Sustainable technologies to bring energy transition has largely four pillars, I would say. One has been traditional renewable energy sources. At a global level, looking at hydro, wind and photovoltaic (PV). In South Africa and on the continent looking at mostly wind and PV domination, and then the subject of green hydrogen, which is going around at a global level, including in South Africa. The third one being carbon sequestration, which is also vital in respect of what we refer to as blue hydrogen, and then battery energy storage, like we’ve seen in the country, a programme that was run by the DMRE, under the risk mitigation programme.

“In looking at these four pillars, I would then draw your attention to the first two – traditional renewable energy sources, which is wind and PV, where we’ve seen development on a massive scale in the country. This is recognised as the lowest-cost decarbonisation technology. “It also has the benefit of reducing global greenhouse-gas emissions, and renewable energy sources also have a critical role in the production of green hydrogen.

“If you look at the second pillar, that’s where the latest and new tech is being involved. This is an entire sector, the way we see it, is that it is going to increase the uptake of renewables in power generation. The other massive impact it is going to have is that it can aid the decarbonisation of the more difficult sectors, including petrochemicals, iron and steel, and in the longer term it could have a massive impact on long-term energy storage. It also talks to the point of the intermittent nature of renewable energy,” said Mungroo.

“In terms of what have we done as a country in renewable energy or this green economy, the DMRE has run a phenomenal programme. Since the first programme, we’ve seen this programme oversubscribed, quite easily by four to five times or even more. Every round that we’ve run in the country, we’ve seen sponsors come in and, in every round, we see new sponsors come into the market. That’s clearly healthy for competition in the sector.

“Renewable energy investment has had support at all levels and remains possibly one of the most attractive sources. Having said that, there is no doubt that brown energy has a role to play, and, in our view, they have sufficient funding support, albeit sometimes more challenging when you look at particular technologies, for example coal, but there are other brown technologies such as gas.

“One must look at this entire energy system and look at what is a balanced approach to get what we regard as our optimum energy mix. “In my view, the mining industry, with the ability of the licensing for 100 MW, has benefited. “Looking forward, from a financing point of view, there is no doubt that the most efficient projects and initiatives will find the investment that’s required,” said Mungroo.

Takeaway

A strong takeaway from the webinar was that South Africa dare not renege on going green owing to the Southern African region bearing the brunt of South Africa’s overweight greenhouse-gas emissions. A thought one is left with is that this might have legal consequences for the country in the years ahead.