The program, which was announced at the United Nations COP27 summit in Egypt, would be supported by €200 million (US$206 million) in EIB funding and is anticipated to boost the nation’s energy infrastructure by 1.2GW of renewable power.
It falls under the Embedded Generation Investment Programme of the DBSA, which was launched in 2017 and intends to finance and extend the deployment of solar PV and wind generation, specifically by independent power providers, throughout South Africa.
“South Africa, like many African nations, is already feeling the effects of climate change,” DBSA CEO Patrick Dlamini stated. An key factor in South Africa’s resilient and sustainable growth is this new investment from the EIB in our Embedded Generation Investment Program.
The two banks first worked together in 1995, and have since collaborated on 11 projects. This marks the EIB’s largest ever investment in South Africa.
“The EIB is stepping up our efforts to support green energy projects globally, with a special focus on Africa and economies dependent on carbon-intensive activities that are vulnerable to the impacts of climate change,” said EIB vice president Ambroise Fayolle.
South Africa has seen a number of investment projects of late; the World Bank committed US$497 million to repurposing a coal plant to install 150MW of solar PV, and last week Chinese-owned Talesun opened a 325MW PV manufacturing plant in the country.
The EIB said its facility complements the Just Energy Transition Partnership with South Africa, which focuses on public sector developments to ensure that socioeconomic needs are met in communities most vulnerable to the effects of the energy transition.
This news follows an August announcement by the South African government, introducing a slew of policy changes to accelerate the deployment of renewable energy across the country and stabilize its grid as quickly as possible to mitigate the country’s recent blackouts.
