By Mwangi Githahu 
Jul 16, 2021
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Cape Town – The City of Cape Town is looking for private and public sector financiers to boost its plans to diversify its energy mix in a bid to significantly reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, according to Mayco member for finance, deputy mayor, Ian Neilson.
The move follows President Cyril Ramaphosa’s announcement in June exempting generation projects up to 100MW in size from the NERSA licensing requirement, whether or not they are connected to the grid.
The City is particularly interested in development banks and multilateral development funds with proven experience in providing finance for renewable energy projects to submit proposals for low cost finance of renewable energy projects that it will own and operate.
“We hope to have a ground-mounted solar photovoltaic (PV) plant built and operated by the City by approximately 2022/23, if all goes according to plan. This is in addition to our intent to procure some of our energy from independent power producers in future.”
He said the City’s programme will be made up of a number of projects ranging in size from less than 1MW to 100MW per project and all projects will be located on City-owned land and buildings, typically within the City distribution grid.
“The City is already a leader in its climate actions, in efforts to diversify its energy supply, in energy efficiency and in sound governance and prudent financial management. We look forward to entering into partnerships as we all join the movement for a more sustainable, climate-friendly city.”
Mayco Member for energy and climate change Phindile Maxiti said: “The City has always believed that local governments have the constitutional power and obligation to procure renewable energy and this is necessary to move away from the sole reliance on Eskom for energy supply.
“A stable and cleaner energy supply will also give the economies of Cape Town and other municipalities in the country a boost towards sustained recovery following the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the economy.”
Meanwhile the Western Cape has extended the deadline on the Request for Information (RFI) for its Municipal Energy Resilience (MER) Project to 6pm on July 19.
Department of economic development and tourism spokesperson Joe-Mark Arnold said: “The RFI is calling on all potential private and public sector organisations, including Western Cape municipalities, to provide information on renewable energy projects that would develop into new generation capacity in the Western Cape.
“This is an important step forward in our MER Project which was launched last year to support municipalities to take advantage of the new energy regulations to generate, procure and sell their own power so that we can become more energy secure in the province.”
In March this year the provincial government announced that seven municipalities would participate in the MER project, which would ultimately take them off the Eskom grid.
The municipalities of Drakenstein, Mossel Bay, Overstrand, Saldanha Bay, Stellenbosch and Swartland were identified as participating in the project alongside the City of Cape Town.
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