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Abstract
This paper explores the political economy of energy transition in South Africa. An economic model based around a powerful ‘minerals-energy complex’ that has previously been able to provide domestic and foreign capital with cheap and plentiful coal-generated electricity is no longer economically or environmentally sustainable. The paper analyses the struggle over competing energy visions, infrastructures and political agendas in order to generate insights into the governance and financing of clean energy transitions in South Africa. It provides both a rich empirical account of key policy developments aimed at enabling such a transition and provides reflections on how best to theorise the contested politics of energy transitions.
Notes on contributors
Lucy Baker is a Research Associate in the School of Global Studies at the University of Sussex, working on an ESRC-funded project, Rising Powers, Clean Development and the Low Carbon Transition in Sub-Saharan Africa. She completed her PhD on The Political Economy of Socio-Technical Transitions in South Africa’s Electricity Sector in 2012, from the University of East Anglia.
Peter Newell is Professor of International Relations at the University of Sussex and Director of the Centre for Global Political Economy. He works on the politics and political economy of climate change and energy and is author most recently of the books Globalization and the Environment: Capitalism, Ecology and Power (Polity, 2012) and co-author of Climate Capitalism (CUP, 2010) and Governing Climate Change (Routledge, 2010)
Jon Phillips is a PhD student in Department of Geography at King’s College London. His research in South Africa was conducted as research associate on the Governance of Clean Development Project at the University of East Anglia. His PhD research addresses justice and the political economy of fossil fuels and renewable energy in Ghana.
Notes
We are grateful to the two anonymous reviewers of this paper for positive and useful feedback. We also gratefully acknowledge the support of the ESRC (066-27-0005) for the research undertaken for this paper.
1. South Africa holds the world's largest reported reserves of gold, platinum group metals, chrome ore and manganese ore and the second-largest reserves of zirconium, vanadium and titanium. In a report commissioned by US-based Citigroup bank, South Africa was ranked as the world's richest country in terms of its mineral reserves, worth an estimated $2.5 trillion (National Planning Commission Citation2013).
2. Notably the Department of Trade and Industry's Industrial Policy Action Plan 2011/12–2013/14 (IPAP), the Economic Development Department's New Growth Path (NGP) and the Department of Energy (DoE)'s Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) 2010.
3. ‘Financialisation’ refers to ‘a self-absorbing process that does not necessarily return money into the real economy of production' (Freund Citation2010: 21). It is a central feature of South Africa's MEC and as a ‘landscape’ trend since 1970s includes the proliferation of financial markets and institutions, the expanding range of financial services, increased international integration of national economies and the separation of industrial from finance capital as driven by trends of neo-liberal economic development. The result is that economic and social life is made vulnerable to financial instability (Ashman et al. Citation2011).
4. Interview with manager, Sustainability, Eskom, May 2011.
5. Interview with head of South Africa's DNA, Department of Energy, May 2011.
6. Interview with Designated Operational Entity, Johannesburg May 2011.
7. Interview with hydropower developer, May 2011.
8. Interview with British High Commission staff, May 2011.
9. Interview with Project Coordinator, South African environmental NGO, May 2011.
10. Interview with head of South Africa's DNA, Department of Energy, May 2011.
11. Interview with senior staff, Danish embassy, Pretoria May 2011.
12. Interview with head of South Africa's DNA, Department of Energy, May 2011.
13. Interview with hydropower developer May 2011.
14. Interviews with CDM office staff in the Department of Trade and Industry, May 2011.
15. Interview with head of South Africa's DNA, Department of Energy, May 2011.
16. Interview with state employee and former employee of Eskom, Johannesburg May 2011.
17. Interview with Programme Coordinator, British High Commission, May 2011.
18. Interview with manager, Sustainability, Eskom, May 2011.
19. Involved in inter-business accords on energy efficiency, for example, as part of The Networked Leadership Partnership on Energy Efficiency as well as collaborations with government through the Energy Efficiency Technical Committee. Interview with Programme Coordinator, National Business Initiative, May 2011.
20. Providing soft loans for the Solar Water Heater programme.
21. Interview with manger, Sustainability, Eskom, May 2011.
22. The work by Burton (Citation2011), Nakhooda (Citation2011) and Baker (Citation2012) might be considered exceptions in this regard.