Topic:

South Africa 2025

Latest

[Episode #277] – Just Transition in South Africa

Jun 3 2026

This is the third and final part of our miniseries about South Africa's energy transition, based on Chris' travels there in September and October of 2025. The first part was Episode #264, in which we heard how the end of apartheid precipitated reform of the country's energy systems. The second part was Episode #276, where we learned how South Africa is reforming its electricity system from a state-owned monopoly to a free market, and from coal to renewables.

South Africa has enough wind and solar resources and land to generate at least three times as much power as its entire annual load, but the country is still locked into its old coal-fired electricity grid. Market reform is the key to unlocking that potential.

In this episode, we'll hear how those reforms can help deliver a just transition for South Africa, the most economically unequal country in the world. Because there, the energy transition isn't only about cheap, clean power; it's also a driver of economic justice. Today, some of the poorest households pay up to three times the grid price for electricity drawn through informal connections, and formalizing that power is a chance to deliver cheaper, fairer access to those who need it most.

We'll also learn how utilities and regulators across sub-Saharan Africa are working to integrate unsanctioned, distributed solar and storage into their grids. In South Africa, roughly 60% of those systems were never reported to the utility, and in Kenya the figure is effectively 100%. The economics are hard to argue with: the $1.7 billion Africa spent on solar panels last year is already meeting more demand than the $20 billion a year it spends on diesel fuel, with more than 85% of it self-financed. That bottom-up adoption is now transforming energy systems not only in South Africa, but across the entire region.

Guest #1:

Dr. Joel Nana is a Fellow at the Energy for Growth Hub and a Senior Manager at Sustainable Energy Africa. His Africa-focused work spans grid integration of distributed energy resources, urban energy profiling, city-wide energy-systems modeling, and electric mobility, with capacity-building for policymakers woven into every project. Joel holds a PhD in Energy Systems Engineering at the University of Cape Town.

On LinkedIn

Guest #2:

Dr. Josh Dippenaar is a researcher and practitioner focused on DER grid integration in South Africa. He has published on rooftop PV economics, utility tariff design, interconnection policy, and electricity markets in the developing world. He is currently working on developing new markets with Mulilo, an Independent Power Producer (IPP) in Southern Africa. Previously, he was an energy engineer with Sustainable Energy Africa, and a senior engineer at the Centre for Renewable and Sustainable Energy Studies. He has a Masters of Engineering and a PhD in Electrical Engineering from Stellenbosch University.

On LinkedIn

Guest #3:

Dr Kenneth Creamer is an academic economist based at the University of the Witwatersrand.

Over the past 30 years, Creamer has published on macroeconomic policy and energy policy, in local and international academic journals and books.

Creamer is a member of South African President Cyril Ramaphosa’s Economic Advisory Council as well as the advisory council of South Africa’s Minister of Trade, Industry and Competition.

In addition to his position at the University of the Witwatersrand, Creamer serves as a Director of Creamer Media, publisher of news and information platforms Engineering News, Mining Weekly and Polity.

On the web:

Personal website: https://www.kennethcreamer.com/
Kenneth Creamer’s faculty page at University of Witwatersrand

Guest #4:

Lebogang Mulaisi is the Executive Manager responsible for Policy and Research in the Presidential Climate Commission (PCC). She previously served on the commission as a commissioner representing labour and as Chief Operations Officer in the Secretariat. She was previously the head of policy at the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), responsible for labour market policy and the just transition. Through engagements with labour unions, she has developed a blueprint for workers on the mechanisms to transition to a low carbon economy through collective bargaining.

Lebogang was an EXCO and MANCO member at the National Economic Development and Labour Council (NEDLAC). Lebogang has co-authored a chapter in Mistra’s book on a low-carbon future for South Africa. The chapter titled: Democratising a just transition in South Africa Identifies the labour movement as a key lever to build social movements around the concept of a radical vision for a just transition.

Lebogang holds a Master’s degree in Development Economics from the University of Johannesburg (2018) and is completing a PhD in Economics. Her area of focus is climate-induced structural change and its impacts on labour productivity.

On the Web: Profile of Lebogang Mulaisi at the National Youth Development Agency

On LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lebogang-mulaisi-a376324

Guest #5:

Dr. Mark Swilling is Distinguished Professor and Co-director of the Centre for Sustainability Transitions at Stellenbosch University. His latest book is The Age of Sustainability: Just Transitions in a Complex World (London and New York: Routledge, 2020). Together with Eve Annecke, he has co-authored, Just Transitions: Explorations of Sustainability in an Unfair World (Tokyo: United Nations University Press, 2012), co-edited with Adriana Allen and Andreas Lampis Untamed Urbanism (New York and London: Routledge, 2016), co-edited with Josephine Musango and Jeremy Wakeford Greening the South African Economy (Cape Town: Juta, 2016) and was the lead author with Ivor Chipkin et. al. of Shadow State: Politics of State Capture (Johannesburg: WITS Press, 2018). He is a member of UNEP’s International Resource Panel where he was the co-lead author of The Weight of Cities: Resource Requirements of Future Urbanization, published in 2018.

Mark was on the Board of the Development Bank of Southern Africa for nine years and until September 2023 where held the position of Chairperson of the Board. The President of South Africa appointed Mark as a member of the National Planning Commission (2022-2027). In 2024. he was appointed to the Board of the National Transmission Company of South Africa. He has been a visiting Professor at the universities of Sheffield and Utrecht, and Georgetown University in Washington D.C, and in 2018 was the Edward P. Bass Visiting Environmental Scholar at Yale University. As of 2023, he published 20 books, 86 book chapters, 66 peer reviewed articles, 56 reports, 143 presentations, 49 major research projects, and supervised 56 Master’s theses and 27 PhDs (six incomplete as of 2023). His private sector roles include Chair of the Board of Ekapa Energy (Pty) Ltd and Chair of the Board of Creation Capital Investments (Pty) Ltd.

On the Web: Mark’s website

Guest #6:

Dr. Megan Davies is an inter-disciplinary researcher at the Centre for Sustainability Transitions (CST) at Stellenbosch University in South Africa. She explores the governance, finance, and justice dimensions of infrastructure transitions in the global South, focussing on South Africa’s energy transition. She completed her PhD, South Africa’s contested transition to energy democracy – lessons and struggles emerging from the Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme, which investigated the socio-economic and political ramifications of decentralised renewable energy infrastructure and used a transdisciplinary research methodology to explore this in the context of South Africa’s flagship renewable energy initiative. Megan’s PhD research provides the basis for her continued exploration of South Africa’s energy transition, with an awareness of the ongoing struggles to advance just, equitable and sustainable futures in the country.

Megan is also involved in the CST’s postgraduate programmes. As programme leader and co-convenor for the foundation and capstone modules for the PGDip in Sustainable Development, she is motivated to bridge research and teaching at the Centre by enlivening connections between CST’s transdisciplinary research and the range of modules on offer. In the teaching space, she is curious about education for sustainable development and how transformative learning might support sustainability transitions. In addition to the PGDip programme, she is a postgraduate supervisor of Master’s and PhD students, and in this context is interested in the role of embedded research and reflective practice to support knowledge co-production for sustainability.

On the Web: Megan’s page at Stellenbosch University

On LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/megan-davies-a81b9241/

Guest #7:

Megan Euston-Brown is the Director and Project Manager of Sustainable Energy Africa (SEA). Megan has worked in sustainable energy development since 2003, managing multi-year urban energy transition and climate response capacity building programs. This has included State of Energy reporting, city energy strategy development and climate action planning, cost of supply, tariffs and distribution sector reform, green building policy development, energy efficiency, energy poverty and just transition tracking. Megan is an experienced development facilitator and has worked extensively with local level energy data collection, policy and institutional development.

On LinkedIn

On X: @SEA_UrbanEnergy

Guest #8:

Dr Wikus Kruger is the Director of the Power Futures Lab at the University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business. He is a research lead and lecturer on power sector investment in sub-Saharan Africa. His research focuses on measures to accelerate investment, in particular into renewables, through structured procurement programmes such as auctions. Dr. Wikus Kruger has been working in the African energy sector for 14 years. He holds a PhD from UCT; an MSc from Antwerp University; and MPhil, BPhil and BA degrees from Stellenbosch University.

Geek rating: 7

(more…)

[Episode #276] – Electricity Reform in South Africa

May 20 2026

Mini Episode

This is the second part of a miniseries about South Africa's energy transition, based on Chris' travels there in September and October of 2025. The first part was Episode 264, in which we heard how the end of apartheid precipitated reform of the country's energy systems.

South Africa is arguably one of the most exciting places in the world to see the energy transition unfolding right now, because after nearly 150 years of relying almost exclusively on coal for its energy, it is finally implementing reforms that will allow its electricity system to integrate more renewables onto its grid.

Eskom, the state-owned monopoly, has owned and controlled the grid for over a century. Its aging coal fleet still provides around 80 percent of the country's electricity, even though solar power is now far cheaper, and it has been able to block new renewable projects because they threatened its coal business. But now Eskom is being broken up into separate units for generation, transmission, and distribution. And the country is launching its first wholesale electricity market — the South Africa Wholesale Electricity Market, or SAWEM — opening the door for renewables to compete with coal.

At the same time, there is also an enormous and growing informal supply in the form of distributed solar — enough to meet a quarter of the country's electricity demand. Many businesses and residents are installing their own solar and battery systems, often without any kind of permission from or notice to the utility. That is simultaneously creating an entirely new and complex sort of electricity system that's hard for utilities to manage, while also making the system far more resilient. In fact, distributed solar batteries are credited with putting an end to the "load shedding" blackouts that plagued customers for over 15 years.

Formally and informally, South Africa is rushing headlong from its coal-fired past and into the renewably powered future. Clean generation led by solar surged past 30 percent in late 2025, while coal fell to a record monthly low. South Africa's experiment in restructuring a vertically integrated, coal-dependent grid offers an early look at the politics, economics, and surprises that other markets will face as they take on their own transitions to renewables.

In this episode, we'll be hearing from experts who are closely involved with the electricity reforms in South Africa. In the next episode, we'll see how those reforms play an important role in delivering a just transition.

Guest #1:

On LinkedIn

Guest #2:

Keith Bowen is a power systems economist and Senior Manager: Market Operator at the National Transmission Company of South Africa (NTCSA) in the Eskom Transmission Division. He has extensive experience in energy economics and planning in the power sector, and is responsible for developing wholesale pricing mechanisms, supporting internal transfers within the vertically integrated utility, and payments to independent power producers. With the restructuring of Eskom, he is involved in developing future market mechanisms and trading arrangements between the transmission subsidiary and other industry participants. Keith has bachelor’s degrees in computer science and economics, and a master’s degree in economics from Witwatersrand (Wits) University.

On LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/keith-bowen-9674821a/

Guest #3:

Dr Kenneth Creamer is an academic economist based at the University of the Witwatersrand.

Over the past 30 years, Creamer has published on macroeconomic policy and energy policy, in local and international academic journals and books.

Creamer is a member of South African President Cyril Ramaphosa’s Economic Advisory Council as well as the advisory council of South Africa’s Minister of Trade, Industry and Competition.

On the web:

Personal website: https://www.kennethcreamer.com/
Kenneth Creamer’s faculty page at University of Witwatersrand

Guest #4:

On the Web: Profile of Lebogang Mulaisi at the National Youth Development Agency

On LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lebogang-mulaisi-a376324

Guest #5:

On the Web: Mark’s website

Guest #6:

On LinkedIn

On X: @SEA_UrbanEnergy

Guest #7:

Geek rating: 7

(more…)

[Episode #264] – History of the Transition in South Africa

Dec 3 2025

Mini Episode

South Africa has earned a reputation for having an old, backward, and unreliable electricity system more dependent on coal than any other country with a similarly sized economy. With an aging fleet of coal-fired power plants owned by a century-old utility that has actively resisted the energy transition, its grid is ripe for modernization.

South Africa is also blessed with largely untapped wind, water, and solar resources that could meet all of the country's energy needs several times over. Few countries better exemplify both the challenge and opportunity in the energy transition.

That transition is now under way, both through deliberate official reforms and through an uncontrolled explosion of solar and batteries that customers are installing on their homes and businesses. Over seven gigawatts of behind-the-meter solar and storage now operate in a country whose grid demand rarely exceeds 30 gigawatts, all deployed with zero subsidies.

To explore this story, Chris traveled to South Africa in September 2025 for a six-week research trip. He recorded numerous interviews with people closely involved in the country's energy transition, which we are featuring in a new miniseries.

We begin with Anton Eberhard, Professor Emeritus at the University of Cape Town's Graduate School of Business. For more than 35 years, Anton has worked to modernize and liberalize South Africa's power sector in pursuit of a more equitable, just, and clean energy system. His commitment to justice runs deep: in 1977, he became one of the first white South Africans imprisoned for refusing conscription into the apartheid military. After his release, he pursued a PhD in solar energy around 1980, doing fieldwork in remote Lesotho villages long before renewables were economically viable.

In this conversation, Anton recounts the evolution of South Africa's power sector alongside his own personal history. He explains why Eskom, once named the best utility in the world, saw its energy availability factor plummet from over 90% to as low as 40% at the height of the country's power crisis. He describes the political economy keeping coal interests entrenched, his role in the groundbreaking 1998 white paper whose proposed reforms are only now, 27 years later, being implemented, and why structural changes remain critical for accelerating the energy transition. This will give you the essential context for the rest of our South Africa miniseries, and contains many universal insights that may be useful to understanding the energy transition wherever you live.

Guest:

Anton Eberhard is a Professor Emeritus and Senior Scholar at the University of Cape Town’s Power Futures Lab in the Graduate School of Business. His research, teaching and advisory work focuses on governance and regulatory incentives to improve utility performance, power investment challenges, the design of new power markets, distributed energy resources and linkages to electricity access and sustainable development. Prof Eberhard was a member of the Global Commission to End Energy Poverty. He has worked in the energy sector across SubSaharan Africa, and other developing regions, for more than 35 years and was the founding Director of the Energy and Development Research Centre. He is a Foundation Member of the Academy of Science of South Africa. He was appointed by the President of South Africa to chair a task team to resolve serious financial and technical challenges in the national utility, Eskom, and to make proposals on the restructuring of the power sector and he currently provides technical assistance to the National Energy Crisis Committee. Previously he has served on the country’s Ministerial Advisory Council on Energy, the National Planning Commission, the National Advisory Council on Innovation, and the Board of the National Electricity Regulator of South Africa. In 2012, he received the SA National Energy Association’s award for outstanding and sustained contributions to the enhancement of the South African energy environment. Prof Eberhard has more than 150 peer reviewed publications to his credit including three recent books: Independent Power Projects in SubSaharan Africa; Power Sector Reform and Regulation in Africa; and Africa’s Power Infrastructure: Investment, Integration and Efficiency. He has undertaken numerous assignments for governments, utilities, regulatory authorities, donor and multi-lateral agencies, banks and private sector companies.

On the Web: Power Futures Lab

Geek rating: 3

(more…)