Page 7 - AfrElec Week 33

AfrElec RENEWABLES AfrElec
UK green bank to support 254 MW of clean capacity in SA
SOUTH AFRICA
UK Climate Investments (UKCI), London’s green investment bank, is to provide ZAR253mn ($16.4mn) of critical nancing to black-owned renewables developer H1 Holdings to build 254 MW of wind and small hydro capacity in South Africa.
e cash that will back three major green pro- jects represents a major international investment in South Africa’s Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) programme.
The money will help fund the Kruisvallei Hydro Plant in Free State Province (4 MW), the Kangnas Wind Farm in Northern Cape Province (140 MW) and the Perdekraal East Wind Farm in Western Cape Province (110 MW).
e projects should be completed by the end of 2020, generate enough power for 200,000 homes and help avoid 844,000 tonnes per year (tpy) of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
As well as supporting the country’s BEE movement, the investment forms a key support of the country’s e orts to reduce its reliance on coal. All three are part of Round 4 of the coun- try’s Renewable Energy Independent Power Pro- ducer Procurement (REIPPP) programme.
“Over 90% of electricity generation capacity in South Africa currently relies on fossil fuels. Our partnership with H1 Holdings supports the country’s transition to a new energy mix – promoting cleaner growth in southern Africa’s largest economy whilst stimulating economic
development in rural areas and supporting increased BEE participation in the renewables sector,” said UKCI managing director Richard Abel.
e Kangas and Perdekraal East farms are both owned by pan-African utility Lekela Power and international developer Mainstream, with H1 Holding owning minority stakes.
e Kruisvallei hydro project is a 4.7-MW scheme on the Orange River using the flows released from the Vanderkloof dam.
H1 Holding currently has a portfolio of equity stakes in 660 MW of green projects and aims to provide cleaner energy to 2mn households with cleaner energy by 2035 and forms part of the gov- ernment’s BEE movement.
The investment represents UKCI’s second commitment in sub-Saharan Africa and fifth investment in total. In January, UKCI and Inves- tec announced that they would act as corner- stone investors in Revego Africa Energy. e dedicated African renewable energy yieldco intends to seek a listing on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange later in 2019, targeting an initial listing size of ZAR2bn ($130mn).
UKCI is a joint venture between the Green Investment Group and the UK Government’s Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. UKCI is managed by Macquarie Infra- structure and Real Assets, the world’s largest infrastructure manager.™
South Africa, India, China argue over climate change costs
GLOBAL
SOUTH Africa, India and China are leading a call by the world’s largest emerging economies for established industrialised countries to carry the costs of ghting climate change and not to expect developing countries to pay for problems they did not cause.
Environment ministers from India, China, South Africa and Brazil – dubbed the BASIC countries – agreed last week to urge to make “the (2015) Paris (Climate) Agreement accepted by all countries in its true letter and spirit.”
What this means is that industrialised nations must maintain the commitments and targets set out in the United Nations Framework
Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), signed at Paris in 2015.
These targets are somewhat less stringent than UN chief Antonio Guterres’ recent call for countries to build no more new coal plants from 2020 and for carbon neutrality by 2050 in a bid to limit global warming to 1.5 C.
e politics are that only developed countries in Europe are likely to meet such targets.
BASIC countries, which have only recently become industrialised, view that they are less responsible for global warming than developed countries and that they should not sign up to such stricter targets.
Week 33 21•August•2019 w w w . N E W S B A S E . c o m P7