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On the 26th
March 2009, the National Energy Regulator of SA approved the Renewable
Energy Feed-In Tariff (REFIT) Guidelines. The REFIT provides for a Power
Purchase Agreement of ZAR 2.10 per kWh for CSP developments in South
Africa, a higher rate than for other renewable energy technologies for
electricity generation. Already the country has seen some climate change
related financing through the Clean Development Mechanism under the
Kyoto Protocol and future (post-2012) financing could significantly
scale up the financial and technological resources potentially available
to South Africa’s renewable energy projects, including CSP developments.
It will be critical that the country makes full use of these
opportunities. This workshop is designed to start a discussion on
scaling up CSP, bringing together interested individuals from project
developers, government, NGOs, research institutions and elsewhere.
South
Africa has amongst some of the best solar resources in the world and
already we have committed ourselves to a target of 10,000 GWh of
renewable energy by 2013. At the DME Renewable Energy Summit in March
2009, the Energy Minister indicated that more ambitious targets “for the
period 2013 and 2018 could be set in the range of six to nine percent
and nine to fifteen percent of the current capacity respectively”. Only
by pursuing a higher renewable energy target and by maximizing our
energy gain from the sun are we able to peak our GHG emissions by
2020-2025, stabilise them for ten years and decline them in absolute
terms thereafter – a target required by science to prevent dangerous
climate change.
Government
is increasingly setting clear goals in policy and has put in place
incentives through the REFIT. The purpose of the workshop was to discuss
how large-scale roll-out of CSP can be realized. What are the technical,
industrial and infrastructure requirements for the large-scale rollout
of CSP in South Africa?
Downloadable presentations from the
workshop:
Also available:
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