Details
In 2021, at COP26 in Glasgow, South Africa signed a Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP) worth 8.5 billion US dollars with a number of international partners, including Germany, the United States of America, United Kingdom, France and the European Union (the International Partners’ Group or IPG). The money was intended to help reduce South Africa’s reliance on coal-fired power plants as well as to create new, greener education and development capacity (car manufacturing, solar installation, etc.). Pledges for South Africa’s JETP have since risen to more than 13.8 billion US dollars after countries like Canada, Sweden, Norway, Japan and Denmark joined the IPG. Although the US withdrew its pledge of 1 billion US dollars in loans and 56 million US dollars in grants, the European Union stepped in to cover the shortfall, announcing a 5.1 billion US dollar package in Cape Town in May 2025.
Roland Ngam is the Project Manager for Climate Justice at the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung in Southern Africa and is responsible for climate and social-ecological transformation.
After South Africa, a few other countries have negotiated JETPs with the IPG: Indonesia, Vietnam and Senegal. Expectations are riding high on South Africa rolling out a successful JETP as this would give the IPG and possibly other donor nations and organisations the encouragement to negotiate deals with other countries and partners. India started discussions with the IPG in June 2022 but the negotiations collapsed over India’s disagreement to phase out coal as quickly as the IPG proposed.
South Africa has since set up structures and adopted an operation plan known as the Just Energy Transition Investment Plan (JET-IP) to guide the operational rollout of its priorities through the 2023-2027 five-year period. The JET-IP is managed by the a group of entities that includes the Just Energy Transition Project Management Unit (PMU) in the office of the President, the Presidential Climate Commission (PCC), a multi-ministerial committee, and a government steering committee.
Although the JETP model was announced with a lot of pomp and fanfare, current attitudes towards reveal a mixture of hope and disappointment. On the one side, there is a constituency that has been employed in mines and coal factories for decades. The livelihoods and urban centres that have emerged around them do not believe that switching to renewables will give them continued access to what they have now. There are also some who question why a grants-based model is being used to help developing countries. Thus group believes that the JETP model is just another entrapment model used by the imperial core to suck opportunities out of the imperial-periphery. On the other side, there are people who acknowledge that South Africa’s energy infrastructure is in urgent need of renewal. JETP funding is therefore seen as an opportunity that should be leveraged. This paper looks at the state of South Africa’s JETP implementation before assessing attitudes towards the plan and what can be done to get a better deal going forward, if at all that is possible.
Coal – the backbone of South Africa’s economy
Coal is the backbone of South Africa’s economy. In fact, coal, gold, diamonds and iron shaped the modern economy of the entire Southern African region. When these resources were discovered in South Africa, hundreds of labour brokerage firms were set up to bring able-bodied young men to work in the country’s mines. The income that was generated from South Africa’s mines sustained tens of thousands of families in countries like Lesotho, eSwatini, Angola, Namibia, Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Although there has been a sharp decline in gold and diamond production and some mines reach their horizon phase, coal mining remains a profitable business. It still employs about 92,000 jobs, with many of the workers coming from neighbouring countries. Zama Zamas or so-called illegal miners are very active around abandoned mines. Despite its heavy reliance on fossil fuels, the country is strongly affected by the effects of global warming. South Africa is a drought prone country. Cape Town came dangerously close to running out of water in 2018, a crisis that has since affected other cities in the Eastern Cape Province of the country.
The hustle and bustle round coal mines have provided economic and political opportunities for disadvantaged Black South Africans for more than a century. In addition to the mining and retail opportunities, mines also provided Black South Africans from diverse backgrounds some of the first arena for labour and other civic organisation. The National Union of Mineworkers (founded by Cyrl Ramaphosa in 1982) and the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA), founded in 1987, played a pivotal role in ending apartheid rule in South Africa. These trade unions continue to play an outsized role in South African socioeconomic life.
More than 80 percent of South Africa’s coal comes from the Witbank-Highveld area in Mpumalanga. South Africa has the biggest coal fleet in Africa and the 6th biggest coal generation capacity in the world. South Africa’s 81 coal units spread across fifteen power stations generate over 45 Gigawatt of the 65 Gigawatt of electricity produced in the country. Twelve of South Africa’s fifteen power stations are also located in Mpumalanga. The presence of the power stations has made Mpumalanga one of the largest pollution hotspots in the world, with very high volumes of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and sulphur dioxide (SO2). Although the South African government commissioned two new coal-fired power stations (Medupi and Kusile) in the late 2000s, many coal units are 60, 70 years old and are struggle to hit an Energy Availability Factor (EAF) of 60 percent. There is therefore a recognition in leadership positions that South Africa needs to renew its coal fleet. ESKOM, the national utility, has a 23 billion US dollar debt problem and so the national government has to shoulder or underwrite the funding required to get new generation capacity. Furthermore, the country needs to build more than 14,000 kilometers of power lines. The JETP was therefore seen as almost a providential solution to help the country resolve all these challenges.
Implementing the JETP
The funds promised by the IPG has started rolling in. Initially, less than 5 percent of the package was in the form of grants. That amount has grown to over 8 percent. Of the 821 million US dollar grant component, 657 million US dollars has already been provided to South Africa. The South African President announced that “US$ 275 million is allocated to technical assistance; $161 million has been earmarked for capacity development; $98 million will be used for infrastructure; $66 million will go to community development. Research has been allocated $17 million and, $72 million will be used for project preparation”.
The JET-IP inaugurated by President Ramaphosa in 2022 has four key priorities: starting the process of phasing out coal-fired power plants, preparing the new energy vehicle sector for a green transition, preparing capacity for green hydrogen and skills development to operationalise the aforementioned priorities.
Specifically, as it relates to the energy sector, the priorities retained include:
Repowering (with clean technologies) and repurposing coal plants;
Restoring and repurposing coal mining land;
Developing local infrastructure;
Promoting economic diversification to support local livelihoods, enterprises, and job creation;
Supporting workers to transition out of coal; and
Investing in training, placements, and career opportunities for youth and workers currently in the coal value chain.
The first decommissioning of a coal power plant has happened at the Komati power station. The decommissioned station is being replaced by a small 150 Megawatt windfarm, 70 Megawatt wind capacity and 150 Megawatt battery storage. Training has been offered to a few workers and local community members in Komati although there are complains that not all who were identified for training have yet been placed in a course. For example, about 10 ESKOM staff have been trained on solar energy technology. Other site workers have also been trained on food gardens and aquaponics. Small gardens and fishponds have been installed and the workers are already earning an income from their catch or harvests. The South African government’s long-term goal is to create 363 permanent jobs, 2,733 temporary jobs and miscellaneous job opportunities around the Komati site. In terms of retraining and community support, the following schemes were developed: training workers on how to install solar power units, food production, aquaponics and coal milling. ESKOM Just Energy Transition Unit head Vikesh Rajpaul has also reassured South Africans that helps is going to the entire community, not just ESKOM workers: “We’re also looking at soft skills training for community members, such as project management, welding courses, negotiation skills, presentation skills, business report writing and skills needed for the establishment of SMMEs”.
Komati missteps – lessons for others
Komati is one of the most important case studies in just transition and unfortunately, a lot of the just transition work has not been handled well. Take the announcement of the power plant as ground zero for change in South Africa. Workers at the site say that the government’s decision to decommission Komati was too hasty. For them, a plan should have been implemented for both the workers and the local community before the plant was shut down. In terms of implementation of both the JET-IP and other measures aimed at greening the economy, civil society, labour and the government generally agree that urgent decarbonisation efforts need to be made. However, both in terms of where to start and in terms of how quickly to go about it, there seems to be little agreement. In fact, discussions have become acrimonious with regards to Komati in particular in recent times.
Civil society organisations like COPAC, the Institute for African Alternatives and the Alternative Information and Development Centre want the South African government to decarbonise the coal energy fleet faster. They are also opposed to new fossil fuel projects. South African civil society organisations successfully opposed the development of a new nuclear power plant in the early 2010s, the docking of Turkish gas-to-power ships (Karpowerships) and more recently, exploration by Shell along the Wild Coast.
The views of civil society are not shared by the wider society. Trade unions agree with the general idea of just transitions in different sectors: energy, agriculture, construction, steel production, etc. However, and this is something that has played out in every part of the world, they fear that green jobs are not necessarily going to go to their members. It has to do in part, with the general age of coal workers, but also the fact that South Africa has one of the biggest deposits of coal in the world. They point to the fact that many Global North countries that have signed on to the Paris Agreement are still building or reopening power stations that run on fossil fuels. The Energy Minister, a former member of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), which was co-founded by President Ramaphosa, is a vocal supporter of coal and other fossil fuels. He has been very upbeat about coal in the post-Ukraine context, making statements like “King coal is back” and “if you want coal, we will give you coal”. Members of the African National Congress who back the energy minister wonder why South Africa needs to take loans to decarbonise while other countries continue to profit from their fossil fuel reserves.
And so, at government level, the President is ticking all the boxes required to implement the agreed JET-P objectives for the country while those who have only every known life within the coal sector are saying: “full steam ahead”.
It is a Mexican standoff.
The road ahead
Events elsewhere are dragging South Africa into a new era, regardless of what happens with the JET-IP. The power crisis that started in the 2010s and worsened in the early 2020s with the dramatic collapse of the coal fleet’s Energy Availability Factor caused the government to massively expand its Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme (IPPPP). Although debates are still raging about the role that these IPPPPs play in perpetuating inequalities, the programmes have installed about 12,000 Megawatt of solar, wind and battery capacity in the country. Rooftop solar has also skyrocketed from less than 1000 Megawatt in 2019 to over 6200 Megawatt today. With other IPPPPs in the pipeline, one can say that at least half of all green electricity capacity in Africa is in South Africa. Consider this: South Africa’s installed solar and wind capacity is currently double Nigeria’s total reliable power generation capacity. This highlights South Africa’s most pressing need right now: the construction of 14,000 kilometers of power lines to bring all the new capacity into homes and businesses. The Integrated Resource Plan 2030 (IRP 2030) envisages adding about 29.5 Gigawatt of renewable energy, which translates to about 22 percent of the country’s energy needs. Although this is a climb down from the IRP 2019, which allocates 33 percent for renewables, it still places South Africa miles ahead of other top 50 global economies. Consequently, in a sense, while regulatory measures are stalling, necessity continues to move the country forward.
Moving forward, there are genuine fears about loss of livelihoods. This is against a backdrop of historic unemployment levels. The rollout of IPPPPs has largely excluded the black majority at ownership level, both in terms of household photovoltaic setups as well as small power stations. The JET-IP can potentially make the same mistake. The South Africa government has to initiative more robust popular participation processes to get all stakeholders (workers, the government, business, community organisations, etc.) more involved in the just transition process.
