It gives me great pleasure to take part in this signing ceremony of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the Government of the Republic of South Africa and the Clinton Climate Initiative (CCI), a programme of the William J Clinton Foundation (the Clinton Foundation) for which we have convened today.
The Clinton Foundation is a well known international non-profit organisation which seeks to help governments in various countries with interventions that are intended to mitigate the negative impact of climate change. One of their key areas of focus, which is also of great importance to us as a country, is the deployment, on a large-scale, of clean energy generation platforms and the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.
The Clinton Foundation is currently assisting governments in India, Australia, as well as the south western states of the United States of America (USA) to assess, develop, and implement projects with a view to deploying the generation of large solar energy platforms. We believe that with the abundant solar resources we have, the foundation can also assist us to access similar opportunities.
It is a commonly known fact that our country is well endowed with unique and abundant natural renewable energy resources that still remain largely untapped. We have indicated in our Renewable Energy Policy of 2003, that a target of 10 000 GWh of renewable energy should be attained by 2013. The implementation of the objectives of this MoU will take us a step closer to the attainment of our ambitious targets.
You may recall that this is one of the objectives I outlined in the budget vote speech I delivered a few months ago. At the time, I alluded to the fact that we will engage the services of the Clinton Foundation in the quest of tapping into their expertise and leverage support from their well established institution especially in the area of solar energy.
We envisage that the cooperation between the government of South Africa and the Clinton Foundation will assist us in deploying, on a larger scale, cleaner renewable energy technologies. We will begin our cooperation by conducting a feasibility study to assess the potential for the creation of a Solar Park in our country. A Solar Park could serve as a concentrated zone of solar development in our country and could include significant solar generation capacity by different Independent Power Producers (IPPs).
What make the Solar Park concept particularly attractive are the envisaged economies of scale and the integration of processes. Instead of having many generation licenses, Environmental Impact Assessments (EIA), inter-connectors, generation plants, only one or few will be commissioned, saving time, money as well as labour, thus making the unit cost of renewable energy more competitive than the conventional fuel generation. This is the ultimate goal we want to achieve with the development of deploying renewable energy.
The feasibility study will cover the preliminary identification of one or more sites for the location of a Solar Park in South Africa, through analysis of solar radiation indices, land availability, access to and costs of transmission, water, job creation, local content; assessment of possible enabling frameworks for a Solar Park; analysis of the cost of power from a Solar Park; as well as the assessment of possible low-cost financing options for a Solar Park.
In addition to the implementation framework, we are developing a framework for the deployment of renewable energy. The feasibility study will also indicate enablers for the renewable energy initiatives.
The outcome of the process will be the development of a business case upon which the IPPs will be attracted to our shores and the eventual creation of a sustainable local renewable energy industry.
We look forward to the successful and productive cooperation with the foundation.
I thank you
Issued by: Department of Energy
9 October 2009
