Nigeria Content Online

South Africa will
start a much-delayed plan to buy electricity from green energy plants
next year under a new subsidies programme to help boost private
investment in renewable power, a senior official said on Monday.

Africa’s biggest
economy is struggling to meet fast rising demand for power, and
state-owned utility, Eskom, said supply would remain tight until 2015,
and especially over the next two years, until its two new power plants
come on stream.

Private producers
and industry have long said they could supply thousands of much-needed
megawatts – either through greenfield projects or via cogeneration at
their plants – but have been blocked by a lack of power purchase deals.

Renewable energy
feed-in-tariffs have long been anticipated to stimulate large-scale
investments, but the country has yet to sign a deal with one of the
independent producers already putting money into renewable projects
after the first phase of subsidies was announced in March last year.

“We are targeting
the first quarter of 2011 for the release of the procurement
documentation,” Ompi Aphane, acting deputy director general at the
energy ministry, told a media briefing.

The tariffs set out
the price per unit of electricity to be paid for energy from renewable
sources. They cover the cost of power generation and allow for a
reasonable profit to tempt private developers to invest in renewable
energy.

South Africa is
increasingly looking towards renewable energy sources to help plug a
chronic power shortage and decrease its dependence on the coal-fired
power stations that provide most of its electricity.

The country expects
to have 7,200 MW of electricity supplied by renewable projects over the
next two decades under a new energy resource plan currently under
development.

South Africa’s power demand is expected to more than double from levels of around 37,000 MW by 2030.