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Policy brief: Energy Transition for Post Covid-19 South Africa

- Iraj Abedian and Nthabiseng Tsoanamatsie

A lack of adequate and reliable electricity has crippled South Africa’s economy for at least the past decade.

And has thus been a key contributing factor to the weakened state the economy was already in when the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic took hold. As South Africa emerges out of the Covid-19 induced economic crisis, the most strategic objective would be to relieve the economy and its growth path from the stranglehold of access to sustainable and competitive power generation. Unless the energy constraint issue is resolved in a credible and eff ective manner, the country will fail to revive growth and create jobs in the short term, and will continue to underperform its potential in the medium to long-term.

South Africa’s transition to renewable sources of energy will not only form a major and important
part of the country’s ability to generate suffi cient and competitive energy, but will also ensure a
meaningful move towards environmental sustainability. This requires the right policies to be put in
place and executed.

Read the full paper here: Energy transition

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