International pledges to South Africa’s Just Energy Transition (JET) Investment Plan have increased to $11.7 billion (R211bn) from the initial $8.5bn pledged by the International Partner Group (IPG) in 2021, while $821 million has been pledged as JET grants, with $613m of this funding thus far reflected in the current JET Grants Register.
This was said by Rudi Dicks, the head of the project management in The Presidency yesterday.
Dicks said other organisations, including philanthropies and private sector donors, were contributing to the JET but were not yet included in the JET Grants Register.
“It is anticipated that these contributions can be recorded in the JET Grants Register in due course,” Dicks said.
He said the bulk of grant funding ($657m) has been provided by the IPG, and the balance by non-IPG partners, including Canada, Spain, and Switzerland, who have chosen to join the JET Grants Register.
Dicks said Germany has pledged $292m; the European Union $125m, the US $62m; Netherlands $61m; Climate Investment Funds $50m; the United Kingdom $42m; Switzerland $39m, Denmark $21m; France $4m; and Canada $1m.
Of the allocated grant amounts, $275m is allocated to technical assistance; $161m is earmarked for capacity development; $98m is for infrastructure; $66m is going to community development. Research has been allocated $17m, and $72m is being used for project preparation.
“Of the total amount pledged, $821m has been committed to grant financing. As further allocations are made by the donors from the remaining pledged grant funds, these will be included in the quarterly updates to the JET Grants Register,” Dicks said.
The publication of the second instalment of the JET Grants Register comes as the JET Project Management Unit in the Presidency next week kicks off a consultative conference to focus on the capacity building of 20 municipalities that distribute about 80% of the power on the grid as part of the implementation plan scheduled to be presented to Cabinet for approval in October.
At a pre-conference briefing yesterday, head of the Presidency’s JET-IP project management unit (PMU), Joanne Yawitch said municipalities played a pivotal role in JET, especially in modernising local electricity infrastructure and ensuring affordable access to energy resources, to address the significant financial, technical, and managerial challenges and opportunities that come with this transition.
Yawitch said the intention was to address issues including assessment of the key JET issues facing the municipal sector, evaluation of the current electricity distribution landscape, distil relevant international implementation lessons and co-create and confirm institutional arrangements to drive JET investment in electricity distribution infrastructure and energy access.
She said post the conference, the unit would try and be fairly systematic and start with the 20 municipalities and then look beyond.
Yawitch said the institutional arrangement is to try and embed across the government and across the society more broadly hence the conference would focus on capability development, finance work streams and energy access for the indigent in municipalities.
Yawitch said though the free electricity grant was in place, it did not reach all of the indigent households hence it needed to be better structured and better applied.
“If we don’t address the financing system through which we will support the poorer households to benefit from a new energy system, you risk ending up in a situation where basically the rich have power and the poor do not and the issues of energy access linked to energy efficiency, as well including the energy efficiency appliances become a key concern for municipalities in ensuring that the whole sector of population are able to access efficient and affordable electricity,” Yawitch said.
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