A review of the policy documents behind South Africa's Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme: How its hits and misses impact society

Abstract

Apartheid in South Africa (SA) left a legacy of uneven access to electricity, impacting the quality of the lives of many. Furthermore, the country's economy has been stifled by loadshedding (scheduled power interruptions) since 2008. Two policy documents have been drawn up to address these problems by 2030: the National Development Plan (NDP) and the Integrated Resource Plan for Electricity (IRP). The NDP was developed by a 26-member National Planning Commission, 25 of which are not State-employees. On the other hand, the IRP is reviewed by the country's Department of Energy. The lauded Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme (REI4P) was subsequently initiated to increase the contribution of renewable energy resources to 20000MW by 2030. REI4P is considered one of the country's "best kept secrets", partly due to the relatively low electricity prices and betterment that it would offer poor communities. In this paper, the authors critique the NDP and IRP, and review investigative reports on some REI4P projects. It is shown that many social problems arose during some REI4P projects including: varied conceptions of roles that government officials, community representatives and foreign developers are expected to play; and few social benefits were created because of a lack of enterprise development skills among local communities. It is concluded that, if the points of departure of critical policy documents were the same, the issues described could have been avoided. Additionally, and perhaps most importantly, poor collaboration between and within governmental departments is suspected as being one of the most prominent underlying causes of socio-economic benefits, job creation, and local development not coming to fruition in REI4P as envisaged. Policy documents at Departmental level should be streamlined with the NDP to discourage "silo-thinking", thus synergizing projects that are put in place to address some of the most pressing issues in SA.