simon zadek

President Zuma today endorsed the South African Renewables Initiative as a South African-led, international, lighthouse initiative designed to enable the scaling up of renewables in South Africa by reducing the incremental cost burden to South Africa’s citizens, economy and jobs…the relevant part of his speech is below:

“Ladies and gentlemen,

As we noted, the biggest barriers to developing renewable energy in Africa to date are not technological, but financial.

In that regard, South Africa has been hard at work in the development and design of financial instruments aligned to our national plans for green growth. During the course of COP 17 we will be launching a key initiative that could kick-start major development for renewable energy generation and industrial development.

The South African Renewable Initiative (SARi) funding mechanism will help us unlock South Africa’s green growth potential through the funding of large-scale renewable developments. This will be achieved with the assistance of global partners – donors and Governments, who will provide innovative funding solutions to facilitate it.

Renewable energy still costs more than non-renewable energy, which in South Africa is largely supplied by cheap, abundant coal supplies. It is estimated that the renewables’ targets indicated in our Integrated Resource Plan 2010 would add an average incremental cost of around 660 million US dollars to South Africa’s annual electricity bill up to the year 2044. The SARi model will enable us to deal with the high cost through low cost loans and other financial instruments combined with time limited pay-for-performance grants.”

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