The World Wide Fund for Nature in South Africa (WWF-SA) identified the continued reliance on coal to generate more than two-thirds of the country’s electricity as a threat to natural resources such as land and water, which are critical to the agricultural sector and will consequently present increased challenges in terms of the food-energy-water nexus. As a result of this concern, WWF-SA proposes an increase in the percentage of RE generation capacity into the South African system to achieve between 11% and 19% of generation capacity from renewable sources as opposed to the 6-9% share proposed in the IRP 2010 Update from 2030.

The Centre of Renewable and Sustainable Energy Studies and STERG was contracted to do the spatial-temporal modelling and compilation of this report which tests the scenarios proposed in  WWF-SA”s  Renewable Energy Vision Report for 2030 (2014).  The RE Vision Report was used as a starting point to test the technical and cost (techno-economic) feasibility and merits of the scenarios that the vision report proposes.

The full techno-feasibility report is now available from the Energy divison of WWF-SA’s website and from STERG’s Publications page.

WWF-SA’s Energy division has also published other reports on Renewable Energy in SA, and include the following:

“Resolving this crisis requires a complete transformation of the way in which South Africa produces and consumes energy. It requires an energy system that is flexible, resilient, can accommodate technology shifts for innovative and cost effective applications, and has minimal impact on land, water and the environment.” – WWF-SA