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The Democratic Alliance (DA) warmly welcomes the published advertisements from the Department of Energy calling on requests and proposals for renewable energy projects. This move finally opens the door for Independent Power Producers (IPPs) to submit their applications and proposals for renewable energy projects. Once approved, these projects will be able to sell renewably-generated electricity into the national grid. This is a positive development and the DA strongly supports the Department of Energy and the IPPs in this endeavour.
It is unfortunate that the process was delayed for roughly two-and-a-half years after it was first announced, and that the Renewable Energy Feed-In Tariff (REFIT) has been abandoned by the National Energy Regulator of South Africa. Nonetheless, the new competitive bidding process that IPPs will go through in order to start up renewable energy generation is a step in the right direction.
Fostering growth in independent power production and in renewable energy in particular will be hugely beneficial to our economy over the long run as it has the potential to create thousands of new jobs in a new sector that will become more and more important as we aim to meet our ever-increasing energy needs.