On 26 June 2014 the South African Department of Energy (“DoE”) formally released a request for registration (“RFR”) to prospective independent power producers who anticipate submitting a bid response in the Coal Baseload IPP Procurement Programme (“Programme”).

Prospective projects are to be registered by 25 July 2014. Whilst making submission of a registration response is not compulsory, only those prospective bidders who have submitted a registration response will be invited to meetings with the DoE and other relevant stakeholders to discuss their potential projects.

The RFR is available at www.ipp-coal.co.za.

Bidders who register will generally not be held to the information submitted in their registration response and will, subject to certain exceptions (namely project name, the name of the prospective bidder and the general description of where the project is located), be able to change any of the details submitted.

The DoE will release the Request for Proposal in due course but it is hoped that this will occur as early as August 2014.

It is anticipated that the Programme is likely to be based and structured on a similar basis to the Renewable Energy Independent Power Produce Procurement Programme. Bid response will initially be assessed against legal, technical, financial and economic development criteria in order to determine the compliance of the bids. If a bid is evaluated as compliant, such bids will then be evaluated on a comparative basis with regard to price and economic development.

The DoE envisages that projects submitted in the first bid submission phase of the Programme must be capable of commercial operation by the end of June 2019.

In our experience and based on similar projects undertaken by the DoE, participating in the process at an early stage affords developers and other parties who intend to participate, a competitive advantage and the ability to address legal, land and environmental requirements at an early stage.  This will be important where time periods for submitting bids are curtailed and qualification criteria will not allow for the submission of bids without the requisite approvals and consents.

Written by Astrid Berman, director , Chris Moraitis, director, Werksmans Attorneys