SARi at the Global Green Growth Forum 11 October 2011
The South African renewables energy industry featured prominently in Copenhagen this week at a leading global think-tank, the Global Green Growth Forum (3GF). Deputy Minister of Trade and Industry Thandi Tobias-Pokolo described the South African Renewables Initiative (SARi), as "an innovative financing mechanism aimed at ensuring the scalable development of a renewables energy industry in South Africa."
The SARi funding mechanism explores the combination of low cost loans and risk guarantee instruments from international sources with modest amounts of domestic public and private funds and international grants on a pay-for-performance for green kilowatt hours basis.
SARi also presents a key element in ensuring that South Africa meets the emissions targets set by President Jacob Zuma who, at COP15 in Copenhagen in 2009, committed South Africa to reducing its emissions trajectory to 34% below business as usual by 2020, and to 42% by 2025.
Approved by Cabinet under the mandate of the Department of Trade and Industry’s Industrial Policy Action Plan (IPAP), SARi aims to establish the financing arrangements needed to enable a critical mass of renewables to be developed, while optimising job creation and expansion of our manufacturing base.
SARi is an integral element in the national strategy that brings together three primary policy areas of industrial development, energy and environment, with the intention of advancing job creation.
SARi will be officially launched with international partners at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Conference of the Parties (COP 17) hosted by South Africa in Durban in December this year. Speaking at 3GF Deputy Minister Tobias-Pokolo reinforced the South African government’s key green industrial development priorities: "Success for SARi would mean enabling the Integrated Resource Plan’s targets for renewables to be met or exceeded, without painful costs neither to the fiscus nor to the consumer.
This could create around 40,000 jobs, contribute up to 15% of South Africa’s Copenhagen Commitment and decarbonise exports by up to 30%. Through SARi we are seeking to complement our contribution to global negotiations with immediate and practical domestic action and partnerships that will bring South Africa into the ‘green race’, creating the growth and jobs we need" the Deputy Minister concluded. SARi Media Release SARi at the Global Green Growth Forum 11 October 2011.
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About the Global Green Growth Forum
In December 2010 in Cancun, Denmark announced that it was launching the Green Growth Forum (3GF, in cooperation with the government of South Korea. On 12 May 2011, during the visit of the South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak to Denmark, 3GF was officially launched as a global public-private partnership and the founding partners were presented to the international public.
A strategic 3GF workshop, attended by a selected number of high-level representatives from the public and private sector, was conducted on 13 May 2011 to set the priorities for the process and deliverables for the inaugural Forum.
Denmark and the other governmental 3GF partners will feed key outcomes and conclusions into high-level political processes, negotiations and forums at national and international level. As upcoming EU president, Denmark will take recommendations from 3GF to Rio+20 and to the EU’s green growth agenda. In addition, Korea and Mexico, as strategic partners, will help link outcomes to the G20.
The Forum will present and promote key recommendations at the UNFCCC COP17 in Durban, late in 2011, and at adjoining events, such as the World Climate Summit 2011. 3GF is coordinating with the Clean Energy Ministerial (CEM) and the World Economic Forum to strengthen public-private collaboration on clean energy as an important component of green growth.
Selected outcomes and recommendations from the 3GF sessions will flow into the third meeting of the CEM in London in April 2012, as well as its related initiatives, which will in turn help to inform the strategic focus of 3GF 2012.
About the COP 17
The United Nations Climate Change Conference, Durban 2011, (COP17) will bring together representatives of the world's governments, international organisations and civil society.
The discussions will seek to advance, in a balanced fashion, the implementation of the Convention and the Kyoto Protocol, as well as the Bali Action Plan, agreed at COP 13 in 2007, and the Cancun Agreements, reached at COP 16 in December 2010. The Conference will be hosted by the Government of South Africa and will take place at the International Convention Centre (ICC) Durban Exhibition Centre (DEC).
