Diversifying South Africa's renewable energy mix through policy

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: South Africa is one of the most energy-intensive economies in the world, with around 90 percent of its electricity generated using coal as a primary resource. As such, the South Africanenergy system remains on a highly unsustainable path, and the potential for long-term growthand prosperity of the economy is thwarted. The alternative to conventional energy, renewableenergy, has unfortunately been relatively slow to take off in the South Africa market. This isdisappointing considering the country's wealth of natural resources required for renewableenergy generation.The potential of renewable energy to contribute to the South African energy mix is thussignificant. The transition to a green economy, and subsequently a more sustainable energyfuture, is therefore achievable and realistic. However, national policies aimed at promotingthe deployment of renewable energy have been thwarted by inconsistencies, lack ofcoordination, and proved relatively ineffective at increasing the country's renewable energycapacity to its full potential. The recent policy changes from a feed-in tariff to a competitivetender approach dented investor confidence in the South African renewable energy industrysignificantly. Nevertheless, renewable energy policy in South Africa is still in its infancy, andvaluable lessons are still to be learnt and incorporated into future policies going forward.A critical analysis of the current policy identifies the need for amendment to the structure ofthe policy landscape. The current policy strongly favours larger, more established and maturerenewable technologies, whilst completely neglecting smaller and less mature ones. This notonly results in a highly undiversified renewable energy mix, which has considerablenegatives in itself, but also reduces the ability of the policy to capture a host of significantopportunities and advantages associated with small-scale renewable energy projects. Theimportance of diversifying South Africa's renewable energy mix was therefore ones of theprincipal stances of this study, and intervention that ensured diversification within theindustry was therefore vital.This study fundamentally designs and proposes a revised policy system that makes use ofboth competitive tenders and feed-in tariffs within the policy framework. In essence, thiswould allow for greater diversification within the renewable energy industry. Thecompetitive tender component should be used for larger, more established technologies and projects, while the feed-in tariff should be used to drastically stimulate investment in smallertechnologies and projects. By making use of a dual-mechanism system, the benefitsassociated with small-scale renewable energy projects can be realized without anynoteworthy opportunity costs foregone. These benefits include diversification of therenewable energy mix; stimulation of smaller technologies; increased job creation; andstabilisation of supply volatility.This study recommends that the current renewable energy policy in South Africa bereassessed for both its relevancy within the South African context as well as its ability toeffectively promote the deployment of alternative energy technologies. In an ever-changingand globalising world, where exogenous influences on national policies are stronger thanever, it becomes necessary and of utmost importance that policies are evaluated constantly inorder to ensure their effectiveness is at optimal level.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University