South Africa urged to move to renewables at pace
Replacing South Africa’s ageing and inadequate electricity generation capacity with renewable energy plants is an opportunity to spur economic growth and cut emissions, the effective head of a presidential climate change commission said.
While many countries face the problem of having to idle fossil fuel-fired power stations to meet climate commitments, many of South Africa’s decades-old, coal-fired plants are due to close anyway, said Valli Moosa, deputy chairman of the Presidential Climate Change Coordinating Commission.
“We are an energy-short country. That’s our opportunity and that hole is only going to be filled by renewables,” he said in an interview at his Johannesburg home on 28 May. “There is no shortage of appetite on the part of capital to invest in renewable energy in South Africa.”