Below is the keynote address delivered by the City of Cape Town's Mayoral Committee Member for Economic Growth, Alderman James Vos, at the opening of Solar Power Africa 2023.

The importance of this summit, taking place in this city and country, at this time in our world, cannot be understated. Our world has experienced more and more extreme weather events caused by a globe that’s warmer than ever. And of course because of the unprecedented scale of power outages in South Africa, a country whose energy supply is still very much dominated by coal.

Here in Cape Town, we stand apart because we successfully deploy the use of our Steenbras Hydro Pumped Storage Scheme to protect City customers from up to two stages of load-shedding where possible. City of Cape Town customers were protected from more than 1 700 of Eskom’s 3 000 hours of load-shedding between February and November 2022.

A critical time to invest in green opportunities

There has never been a more critical point to make real commitments toward moving away from fossil fuels and turning toward the vast energy opportunities of renewables.

For us Africans and others in the Global South, this is especially true. While the Global South, which includes regions in Africa, Latin America and southern Asia, contribute the least to climate change, we are the regions that suffer the most from its effects. At the same time, the clean energy opportunities of Africa are vast – and largely untapped. According to the International Energy Agency, Africa is home to 60% of the world’s best solar resources, yet it hosts only 1% of the global installed solar PV capacity.

And that right there should indicate the potential of the solar PV market. If we want to create a cleaner, more economically sustainable and energy secure future for our children – in fact, for ourselves right now - we need the knowledge and skills resources to fully take advantage of that big, shiny fireball in the sky.

Just last week I had the pleasure to attend the opening ceremony of Africa’s first all-female workforce solar panel manufacturing plant here in Cape Town. This plant will focus on servicing the local market as well as exporting to the rest of Africa. I welcome this company's investment in Cape Town. Especially because it’s operated by women technicians only. The best description I have for this company: It’s women powered.

I’m always inspired to witness the innovation from entrepreneurs and companies, especially at this crucial time, when South Africa is battling its worst electricity blackouts, forcing many businesses and homes to turn to renewable energy, including solar.

Renewable power plants are more cost-effective with a recent study in the US finding that coal is now being economically outmatched by renewables to such an extent that it’s more expensive for 99% of the country’s coal-fired power plants to keep running than it is to build an entirely new solar or wind energy operation nearby.

Cape Town moving towards a cleaner, greener future

In Cape Town, the City is pushing ahead with projects that seize on such energy-supply opportunities or otherwise encourage a creative, out-of-the-box approach.

This includes:

• That the City can now pay cash for power fed into the local electricity grid. Businesses, and in time residents, will receive cash for selling their excess power into Cape Town’s grid.

• A tender for the engineering, procurement and construction of a 7 megawatt solar power plant in Atlantis. The plant is scheduled to start generating electricity in 2024, and be in operation for 20 years, with a foreseen annual output of 14,7GWh and is expected to result in a R47,2 million gross domestic product increase. More such plants are planned across the metro.

• A 200MW procurement of renewable energy was concluded last year and tenders will be awarded in the coming months, with the procurement now in the evaluation phase of technical proposals received from Independent Power Producers.

• And we also issued a tender for third-party aggregators who will reward so-called ‘Power Heroes’ for reducing their electricity usage. This will help to keep more supply on the grid, giving further load-shedding protection to City-supplied customers.

On the other side of this, we understand that there must be a consistent pipeline of skilled workers and businesses able to meet the demands of services and products within this sector. With an increased demand for solar panels, we can create job opportunities for the millions of currently unemployed South Africans. One report actually showed that the solar PV industry alone could create up to 30 000 jobs per year. And so we work closely with partners embedded in the industry. Partners such as GreenCape help us to understand the investment potential of the sector while fuelling skills development of small businesses and communities such as Atlantis.

I want to highlight this area that boasts the Atlantis Special Economic Zone which is dedicated to the manufacturing and provision of greentech services. Under this green banner, the City transferred land to the Atlantis Specialised Economic Zone Company in a deal that allows the organisation to legally contract on site with prospective bidders. Thanks to such initiatives, Atlantis is now a prime development area with 94 hectares of zoned development-ready land available for leasing to investors.

And to make sure that we can seize opportunities in Cape Town, my Department's Investment Facilitation Branch is tasked with helping firms large and small to land and expand in Cape Town. This branch has assisted more than 20 companies, unlocking investments worth billions of rands and thousands of job opportunities.

In my position as the Mayoral Member responsible for Economic Growth in Cape Town, my job is to see that everything we do as the City government is to make Cape Town the easiest place to do business in Africa.

I’m happy to share that in the coming weeks we will launch our own set of ease of doing business indicators, to cut the turnaround times for issuing construction permits, approvals for development applications, and to cut red tape for investors, wanting to expand their operations here.

Investing in green energy in Africa is good – and necessary - for business, people, and the planet. The City of Cape Town and our partners stand ready to work with industry so that we can move towards a cleaner future, together.

Source: City Of Cape Town