CAPE TOWN - The Presidential Climate Commission has stressed that South Africa's energy transition is central to the country's economic transition.
These sentiments were shared during an online discussion hosted by the University of the Free State on Tuesday.
The event focused on what needs to be implemented to power the country.
The discussion was also attended by representatives from power utility Eskom and Business Unity South Africa.
Head of mitigation at the South African Presidential Climate Commission, Steve Nicholls, stressed that the country's move to an economy that was less reliant on coal needed to be done very carefully.
"Energy and power, in particular, are really important parts of that ecosystem both from an employment perspective, particularly if you think regionally, so in Mpumalanga in particular, the vast majority of employment comes from the coal value chain and the power value chain but also nationally it's an important contributor as coal is our second-biggest export by value," Nicholls said.
Eskom's general manager for strategy and planning, Matthew Mflathelwa, said that a key issue at present for the utility was to sustainably balance the energy demand and capacity.
"Taking into account what's going to happen in the future, some of the things we're looking at obviously, how do we address our plant performance, how do we complete our build, how do we unlock additional grid capacity in light of new entrants and how do we start to evolve our business models to enable this transition and this evolving electricity supply industry?"
Nicholls said that in the long run, South Africa would have to be "renewables driven", with around at least six gigawatts investment in the sector from now until the mid-2030s.
