Cape Town is one of 30 cities that have signed an equity pledge that will commit cities across the globe to being a part of inclusive climate change action.

Executive Mayor of Cape Town, Patricia De Lille, flew to San Fransisco in America to sign this agreement, taking the pledge to commit local government to ensuring that climate action is used to reduce poverty, boost economic growth, improve living conditions and achieve more development.

“Today, I visited Epping where a Cape Town-based company, SustainPower, is manufacturing containerised generators that convert biogas and landfill gas into electricity for heating or cooling,” De Lille said on Thursday. “The company’s CEO, Tobias Hobbach, was a participant in the City’s funded masterclass and pre-incubation workshop series in 2017. The City supports the South Africa Renewable Energy Business Incubator (Sarebi) to run these programmes in order to encourage local entrepreneurs to innovate and create jobs in the industry.”

SustainPower was in a very early conceptualization stage of their business when the City provided support through Sarebi, which assists businesses with operational support. These include accounting services, human resources, industrial relation, payroll management, tax and VAT filing, as well as IT support.

“It is encouraging to see that within a year SustainPower is manufacturing their 500Kw BioGas CHP generators from their facility in Cape Town. The company has become the only local manufacturer of gas-to-power gensets in the country. This is a first for the South African economy and the energy sector,” the mayor added. “Even more encouraging was to see how the renewable energy company has innovatively partnered with a Cape Town-based company, Unique Group, that in the past provided saturation dive support vessels to the fossil fuel industry but are now using their skills to produce infrastructure for clean energy.

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“Experts call us the Mecca of renewable energy,” said Mac Jack, the MEC for Finance, Economic Development and Tourism.
“The national minister of energy, Jeff Radebe, also referred to the Northern Cape as the solar kingdom of the world. Indeed, this province is home to sustainable private investment in renewable energy.”

The province hosts 51 of the country’s 102 independent power producers, with more than 19 projects already connected to the grid with a capacity of over 900 MW.
The Northern Cape aims to become a net exporter of green energy by 2020, and achieve an overall energy saving percentage of 24% by 2030.
The province will host this year’s Renewable Energy Conference in De Aar tomorrow (23/08) and on Friday (24/08) and Exhibition with the theme “Driving economic growth and transformation in the Northern Cape through renewable energy.’The Renewable Energy Conference will be held on the tomorrow.

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EEP is proud to present the latest EEP M&E results by mid-2017 which show that EEP Programme continues on the right track with great performance.
The published EEP S&EA semi-annual M&E Programme report 2017 highlights positive progress in terms of reaching rural and urban beneficiaries with almost 800,000 households benefitting from improved energy access through EEP.

Some of the greatest results were achieved in reduction of CO2 emissions where the end of Programme target has been substantially exceeded. So far a reduction of 473,000 tonnes of CO2 has been achieved against the final target of 113,000 tonnes. The three best performers in CO2 reductions of the monitored projects during the first half of the year 2017 were Green Bio Energy in Uganda, GCS Tanzania and Sollatek Kenya.

Similarly, the amount of energy generated, 234,000 MWh/year by June 2017, has clearly exceeded the target of 81,000 MWh/year.

During the six-month period from January to June 2017 29 completed projects were monitored and evaluated, and their contribution has been included into the cumulative Programme results. With 132 projects monitored and 62 still in implementation, EEP has by June 2017 already exceeded 16 of the 22 end-of-the-programme targets of December 2017.

See more results in the EEP semi-annual M&E Programme report 2017, which includes an updated overview of the EEP portfolio. In 2017, EEP continued to interact as an active regional partner engaged in different RE/EE initiatives and provide technical support to project developers.  In the M&E report you can also find highlights of EEP activities in Business Development Support, Knowledge Management and Research.