Auctioning a ‘just energy transition’? South Africa’s renewable energy procurement programme and its implications for transition strategies

ABSTRACT

Clean energy is going transnational. Following the COP21 UN Climate Change Conference in December 2015, a roll-out of clean energy schemes in the global South is fostering a global energy transition. One such case is South Africa, where a policy innovation – the Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme (REIPPPP) – was introduced in 2011. While REIPPPP seems to be a success story in terms of renewable energy capacity, it is unclear how the instrument is shaping the overall course of South Africa’s green transformation regarding the influence of transnational actors, participation in local ownership, and socio-economic benefits. Based on expert interviews and empirical process tracing of the renewable energy projects during the five bidding rounds of REIPPPP (2011–2016), the article analyses the design and effects of REIPPPP and discusses its implications for transition strategies, such as a ‘just transition’.

RÉSUMÉ

L’énergie propre devient transnationale. À la suite de la COP21 Conférence des Nations Unies sur les changements climatiques de décembre 2015, un déploiement de programmes d’énergie propre dans le Sud global est en train de favoriser une transition énergétique mondiale. C’est notamment le cas de l’Afrique du Sud, où une innovation politique – le Programme d’approvisionnement des producteurs indépendants d’énergie renouvelable (REIPPPP) – a été introduite en 2011. Si le REIPPPP semble être une réussite en termes de capacité d’énergie renouvelable, la manière dont l’instrument façonne le cours général de la transformation verte de l’Afrique du Sud n’est pas claire en ce qui concerne l’influence des acteurs transnationaux, la participation à la propriété locale et les avantages socio-économiques. Sur la base d’entretiens avec des experts et d’un suivi empirique du processus des projets d’énergie renouvelable au cours des cinq cycles d’appel d’offres du REIPPPP (2011–2016), l’article analyse la conception et les effets du REIPPPP et discute de ses implications pour les stratégies de transition – et particulièrement celle d’une « transition juste ».

KEYWORDS:

• Transition theory
• just energy transition
• South Africa
• renewable energy
• investment patterns

MOTS-CLÉS:

• Theorie des transitions
• transition énergétique juste
• Afrique du Sud
• énergie renouvelable
• modèles d’investissement

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Manuel Neumann, Carsten Elsner, Ellie Gunesch, Clare Smedley and Nomaswazi Mthombeni for their support.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 REN21 (Renewable Energy Policy Network for the twenty first century) is a think tank whose mission is the promotion of renewable energy and a transition to 100% renewables. REN21 issues the Renewables Global Status Report, which gives an annual account of the current transition processes.

2 Officially the rounds that have taken place so far are labelled as Round 1, Round 2, Round 3, Round 3.5 and Round 4. Round 5 was opened in March 2021, aiming at another 2.6 GW wind and solar photovoltaic energy (GreenCape 2021, 2).

3 Feed-in tariffs are incentives which facilitate investment in renewables, by offering renewable energy producers (including private households) a financial compensation for their investment. After introduction in Spain and Germany, feed-in tariffs have spread to more than 100 countries.

4 Falkner (2014) refers to fossil fuel subsidies to illustrate the trade-offs that characterise the ‘energy trilemma’: while a reduction in fossil fuel subsidies helps to reduce carbon emissions, incentivises energy efficiency and promotes renewable alternatives, a reduction might at the same time adversely impact energy access, especially for communities reliant on energy subsidies.

5 Each project company needs to demonstrate a minimum of 40% South African participation, a minimum black ownership of 12% with a target of 20%, and a minimum of 2.5% ownership by communities living within a 50-kilometre radius of the project site. Site selection was carried out by the private sector, resulting in an uneven distribution of projects.

6 Local content requirements are policies which aim at stimulating domestic industries, by demanding that a certain percentage of goods and services along a value chain be domestically manufactured.

7 See map at https://sfiler.environment.gov.za:8443/ssf/s/readFile/folderEntry/19030/8afbc1c75aea91ba015b66b85c0d4ad8/1492009145253/last/REDZ_251016.png (Department of Environmental Affairs 1994).

8 Data were not retrievable for all 112 projects.

9 Positive examples of training programmes in energy engineering and related subjects are those provided by the Konkoonsies II Solar Facility or Solar Capital Orange.

Additional information

Funding

Research for this article was publicly and privately financed through grants issued by the German Federal Ministry of Science (ref. nos FKZ 01LN1707A; FKZ 01LN1707B), the German Research Foundation (DFG, grant number 855/3-1), by the Volkswagen Foundation’s Global Challenges Initiative and the University of Kassel.

Notes on contributors

Franziska Müller

Franziska Müller is Assistant Professor of Global Climate Governance at the University of Hamburg, and heads the research group ‘GLOCALPOWER: funds, tools & networks for an African energy transition’. Her research covers global climate and energy governance, and political economy of energy, as well as postcolonial and poststructuralist approaches towards International Relations. She has published on REDD+ governmentalities, and on energy justice (Journal of Political Ecology, Energy Research and Social Science).

Simone Claar

Simone Claar heads the research group ‘GLOCALPOWER: funds, tools & networks for an African energy transition’ at the University of Kassel. Among other things, she deals with questions of state and capitalism in Africa, comparative capitalism research, green economy and finance, trade policy and renewable energy. Recent publications include ‘Green finance and transnational capitalist classes – tracing vested capital interests in renewable energy investment in South Africa’ (Claar 2020).