Within the provisions of the South African Renewable Energy White Paper of 2003, the Department of Minerals and Energy undertook a mid-term review of its Renewable Energy Policy.  To this end, a Renewable Energy Summit (the Summit) was convened as part of a stakeholder consultative process which took place on the 19-20th of March 2009 in Centurion, South Africa.

Present at this event, was the Honourable Minister for the Department of Minerals and Energy, Buyelwa Sonjica amongst some of the key policy and decision makers and relevant stakeholders in South Africa. While there have been efforts to accelerate the uptake for renewable energy such as efforts to establish feed-in tariffs for renewable energy, South Africa has unfortunately made little progress in terms of achieving its 10 000 GwH of renewable energy capacity by 2013. To date, South Africa has only managed to achieve an estimated 3% of its target since the White Paper on Renewable Energy was approved by parliament.

At the Summit, the following key factors have been identified as hindering progress towards this target:

• Policy and Capacity constraints
• Inadequate legislative and regulatory frameworks
• Low electricity tariffs
• Financing and manufacturing limitations

However, these challenges were also noted as not being insurmountable provided that dedicated programmes are implemented within the renewable energy sector.

REEEP Southern Africa had the opportunity to present some of its experiences and lessons learnt in the region. The presentation made reflections on regional perspectives of RE deployment and REEEP’s renewable energy applications in Africa, placing huge emphasis on the importance of regional co-ordination on matters related to renewable energy. Efforts to develop regional markets for renewable energy in Southern Africa would lead to major developments in the RE sector, such as the establishment of:

• Common policy and modes of implementation
• Common regulatory framework approaches
• Common trading mechanisms for RE physical power and support mechanisms
• and define a common renewable energy target for the region.

As such, support and commitment from governments and key institutions within SADC is a critical feature in accelerating the uptake of renewable energy in Southern Africa.

Video: Amanda Luxande (REEEP Southern Africa secretariat) talking on regional cooperation and the renewable energy industry (19/03/2009)
Source: Video: CMTV -- engineeringnews.co.za