On Sunday President Cyril Ramaphosa appointed ministers from his ANC party and the pro-business opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) to serve in his “government of national unity”.

In one of the most significant changes, Ramaphosa took away pro-coal minister Gwede Mantashe’s control of the energy sector. Hilton Trollip, a Cape Town University energy researcher, told Climate Home that Mantashe had previously “paralysed” the government’s renewables programme.

The Department of Mineral Resources and Energy has now been split in two. Mantashe is only keeping control of mining and hydrocarbons, while the ANC’s Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, previously the electricity minister, will now be in charge of setting energy policy with a wider mandate. 

EU “green” funds invest millions in expanding coal giants in China, India

Trollip said it was unclear if Ramokgopa would boost renewables as he has not held much power until now. But there is now a better chance that Mantashe’s highly contentious Integrated Resource Plan – which envisages a slowdown in renewable energy investments and a switch to gas-fired power – will be revised, he added.

DA’s Dion George is the new environment minister replacing Barbara Creecy, who has been moved to transport.

Creecy played an active role in several COP climate talks, most importantly successfully proposing a global goal on adaptation at COP26 in 2021. 

JETP talks

Owing to its heavy reliance on coal for electricity, the country is Africa’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases. 

That made it a prime candidate for a world-first funding agreement, backed by wealthy nations, aimed at ramping up investments in clean energy while also protecting those reliant on the fossil fuel sector.

But two and a half years after it was announced, the now $9.3 billion “Just Energy Transition Partnership” (JETP) has made little tangible progress on the ground. 

Meanwhile, as the country grapples with rolling blackouts, state-owned utility Eskom has announced plans to delay the decommissioning of at least three of its coal-fired power plants by several years  – raising the risk that funding partners will walk back on their offers.

A general view of Kendal Power Station, a coal-fired station of South African utility Eskom, in the Mpumalanga province. REUTERS/Siphiwe Sibeko

Kevin Mileham, the DA’s shadow minister of mineral resources and energy, told Climate Home that South Africa’s JETP “will need to be accelerated” as the country is currently not on track to meet global climate goals.

The party wants to see “a rapid roll out” of the programme which will require improved dialogue with the wealthy European and North American countries funding part of it, he added.

It also wants to advance the implementation of a climate change adaptation strategy and believes South Africa needs to do a better job at tracking and reporting its efforts to reduce carbon emissions, Mileham said.

Much of the progress will hinge on the government’s ability to form a united front on foreign policy and forge an effective relationship with the international funding partners.

The ANC and DA have regularly clashed on international affairs, such as the country’s support to Palestine.

They will need to “reconcile their differences [on foreign policy] and come to a shared understanding on international multilateral processes,” says Happy Khambule, energy and environment policy director at Business Unity South Africa, a business lobby group.

Tensions over private sector role

He added that private companies, which will have a significant role in the transition, want to see policy certainty enhanced in the months ahead.

The group is awaiting the finalisation of the Electricity Regulation Amendment Bill, which promises to open up the electricity market and put an end to Eskom’s longstanding monopoly, and the Integrated Resource Plan.

Comment: Africa cannot afford to be complacent about solar radiation management

Meanwhile, the DA’s preference for greater private sector involvement in the energy transition could create fresh tensions with key stakeholders. Left-wing adversaries often deridingly label the DA a “neoliberal” party.

The country’s largest trade union group COSATU wants the newly separated energy department to “stop the privatisation of electricity and energy”, and instead promote state and social ownership models.

“We don’t expect major shifts with regards to the just transition, but rather a more focused approach on its implementation, in particular to make sure workers and communities and value chains are not left behind,” a spokesperson for the organisation told Climate Home.

The just transition should be overseen by multiple government departments given “the triple crisis” of unemployment, climate change and energy shortages, they added, suggesting that, for example, the finance ministry should raise spending on climate-focused public employment schemes.

(Reporting by Nick Hedley, editing by Joe Lo and Matteo Civillini)

The post New South African government fuels optimism for faster energy transition appeared first on Climate Home News.

Like every year, the quick answer is more than nothing but less than enough. To dissect that in more detail, here are our six takeaways from the year in climate.

1. Oil and gas felt the heat

Phasing out or down fossil fuels? Abated or unabated? Scaling up renewables, carbon capture and storage (CCS) and techno solutions. Energy dilemmas, and their buzzwords animated international talks in 2023.

The headline breakthrough came at the end. The Cop28 agreement included for the first time a goal to move away from all fossil fuels in energy systems.

It was the centrepiece of a bigger package that included a call for the tripling of renewables and doubling energy efficiency by 2030.

But it also gave a platform to “transitional fuels” (read gas) and CCS, which some politicians and campaigners regard as “dangerous loopholes” for continued fossil fuel use.

Cop hosts the UAE and most developed countries welcomed the deal as “historic”. For small island states and other vulnerable nations it did not go far enough.

Like most Cop agreements, it was the result of a hard-won compromise struck in overtime – after Saudi-led opposition threatened to leave oil and gas out of the text altogether.

Cop28 president Sultan Al Jaber applauds in the closing plenary (Photo: Flickr/Cop28/Christopher Pike)

The road to Dubai had been equally bumpy. The G7 saw fights over gas and coal with hosts Japan attempting to push controversial strategies like ammonia co-firing.

The G20 in Delhi offered a dress rehearsal of what was to expect at Cop with broad agreement over renewables and bitter disputes over fossil fuels.

In the background, Sultan Al Jaber, oil executive turned Cop president, garnered constant curiosity and scrutiny. He was initially adamant that the focus should be on emissions and not on the fuels themselves, raising more than an eyebrow. But, amid a series of controversies and apparent slip-ups, his position gradually shifted.

Al Jaber contended the Dubai deal would be enough to keep the 1.5C goal in sight. A day later he told the Guardian that Adnoc, the oil firm he runs, would press ahead with a massive oil and gas expansion.

Other rich nations, like the US, keep him company on that front. Such chasms between words and actions will continue to be closely watched.

2. Slow progress on climate cash

The other side of the coin from the fossil fuels debate is finance. When rich countries ask their developing counterparts to sign on to ambitious energy transition plans, many reply: ‘who is going to be paying for that?’

When governments wrangled over targets for adapting to climate change, similar questions were asked.

A clear answer was never forthcoming. We might get more clarity in 2024, with governments set to discuss, and hopefully agree on, a new collective goal at Cop29 in Baku in November.

But a lack of trust has taken root. Rich countries have so far not respected the previous commitment to provide $100 billion a year in climate finance to vulnerable countries.

That was “likely” met in 2022, two years after the original deadline, according to the OECD. We will be looking out for the receipts for confirmation.

Countries were also invited to refill the coffers of the Green Climate Fund. The four-yearly replenishment round got off to a decent start, but an underwhelming pledging summit in October put ambition at risk.

Then the US landed in Dubai in December with a $3 billion funding promise. It brought total pledges to $12.8 billion – setting the GCF on course for a “middling” level of ambition.

But that comes with a gigantic caveat. To deliver the dollars, the Biden administration will have to persuade Republicans in Congress or take control of it by winning elections. Both are tall orders.

Graphic: Joe Thwaites/NRDC

Money talked outside UN diplomacy too. Lots of attention centred on the much-touted reforms of multilateral development banks inspired by the Bridgetown Agenda.

Progress has been slower than many were hoping for. The World Bank lowered its equity-to-loan ratio, freeing up $4 billion a year.

It also installed a new more climate-aware president, officially changed its mission statement and promised pauses in debt repayments for disaster-hit countries. Encouraging steps, but far short of the trillions of dollars developing countries have been calling for.

3.US-China climate talks thawed

Formal diplomatic relations between the world’s biggest polluters suffered an ice-age-like deep freeze in the latter part of 2022 after US Congressional leader Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan. Climate talks were collateral damage.

But 2023 saw a slow but steady thawing. It culminated in a momentous bilateral meeting held in Califonia’s Sunnylands resort a few weeks before Cop28.

The countries’ respective climate envoys, John Kerry and Xie Zhenhua, agreed to revive a climate working group and sketched out the outline of a potential alignment in the upcoming negotiations.

It proved decisive. In particular, their joint support to “accelerate the substitution for coal, oil and gas generation” helped find the right formula to unstick the thorny energy language in Dubai.

U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry shakes hands with his Chinese counterpart Xie Zhenhua before a meeting in Beijing, China July 17, 2023. (Reuters/Valerie Volcovici/ File Photo)

The special personal relationship between Kerry and Xie was a big factor in these improved relations.

When formal diplomacy was on hold, the two kept talking. Xie even brought his grandson to Dubai because the 8-year-old wanted to say “happy birthday to my good friend Mr. Kerry”, who turned 80 during the summit.

But Cop28 was most likely their last hurrah together. Xie is set to retire soon ending a 16-years on-and-off stint. He is likely to be replaced by Liu Zhenmin, a former vice foreign minister.

Kerry has been vague about his future with US elections looming large on the horizon. He recently told Reuters that he would “continue as long as God gives me the breath and work on it [climate] one way or the other”.

4. Carbon credits terrible year

To say 2023 won’t be remembered as carbon credits’ finest year is an understatement. It began with a now-infamous report pouring cold water on forestry-based offsets and ended with talks over Article 6 falling apart spectacularly in Dubai.

In between, scandal after scandal dented the reputation of carbon markets. From the collapse of the world’s second largest project to the suspension of dozens of schemes over exaggerated claims or alleged human rights violations. The blowback prompted even some of the most enthusiastic corporate credits buyers to cool on the idea.

Co-chairs of negotiations at Cop28 on carbon trading rules
(Photo: Flickr/Cop28/Kiara Worth)

Many carbon market supporters had pinned hopes on Cop28 for a spot of good news. Ahead of the talks, it looked like governments could finally fire the starting gun on the creation of a long-awaited global carbon market under the Paris Agreement.

But those hopes were misplaced. Negotiations ended without an outcome following a bitter disagreement over integrity rules between the US and the EU.

Leaping on the string of failures, some critics have been pushing for the whole concept of carbon offsetting to be chucked into the dustbin of history.

But others claim carbon markets provide an essential source of finance for developing nations, love it or loathe it. They are trying to build them back up from the nadir with more stringent climate provisions and better social safeguards.

5. Coal-to-clean deals reality check

As  promises turned into proper plans, Just energy transition partnerships (Jetp) hit the cold wall of reality in 2023. The three initial deals – with South Africa, Indonesia and Vietnam – have all been beset by issues.

The type of money put on the table by rich nations has been a source of common grievance. Grants make up a very small percentage of the funding packages, fuelling fears over debt. As a result, recipient countries revised climate targets downwards.

The energy transition deal aims to wean Indonesia off coal, which now takes up nearly half of the country’s electricity mix. Photo: Kemal Jufri / Greenpeace

Indonesia has watered down coal retirement plans. It now aims to start shutting down on-grid plants before their scheduled closure no earlier than 2035 – five years later than originally planned.

So-called captive plants, that power specific industries, have also caused a massive headache. Wrong assumptions meant a much lower number of them were baked in the original modelling. Struggling to find a way out, the Indonesian government has so far excluded them – and their emissions – wholesale from the Jetp blueprint.

Vietnam’s investment plan, unveiled during Cop28, has no timeline at all for retiring coal. It expects instead to operate plants “flexibly” and to rely on the controversial co-firing of biomass and ammonia with coal.

The authoritarian Vietnamese government has also all but buried the ‘just’ aspect of the partnership. It has jailed five environmentalists on tax evasion charges, which human rights groups say are trumped-up accusations.

Vietnamese campaigner Hoang Thi Minh Hong was sentenced to three years in prison. Photo: CHANGE/350Vietnam

In South Africa, the transition is meant to be reasonably easier as its Apartheid-era coal plants are nearing retirement. But crippling blackouts prompted President Cyril Ramaphosa to say the timetable “must be relooked at” earlier this year.

The plan is also facing fierce opposition from the powerful coal lobby. Our investigation with Oxpeckers discovered the sector partnered with politicians and even managed to water down or delay key policies in a bid to sink the scheme.

6. Loss and damage fund’s good start

As the Cop27 president gavelled the landmark decision on a loss and damage fund in Sharm-el-Sheik, a question loomed large: will countries manage to agree on how it should work within the following 12 months?

‘Yes, definitely’ was the answer.

Governments adopted the decision on operationalising the fund on the very first day of Cop28. It gave the summit’s president Al Jaber an early win and prevented loss and damage from being used as a bargaining chip in the ensuing negotiations.

The success is down to the painstaking work of a 24-member transitional committee that hashed out the details over five gruelling meetings. At the outset, developed and developing countries were at odds on just about everything: who should benefit from the fund, who is expected to pay into it, where it’s meant to be hosted.

Distances gradually narrowed and a compromise deal was eventually struck a month before the climate summit. The World Bank will initially host the fund for four years, despite strong resistance to its involvement from developing nations.

Campaigners at Cop27 call for a loss and damage fund to be set up (Photo credit: Kiara Worth/UNFCCC)

All developing countries “particularly vulnerable” to the effects of climate change will be eligible to benefit from the mechanism. However, the definition of vulnerability – one of the thorniest issues – has not yet been defined.

The decision “urges” developed countries to provide financial resources to the fund, while other nations are only “encouraged” to do so “on a voluntary basis”. Rich nations have been strongly pushing to broaden the donor pool and will likely keep up their efforts.

Pledges from a slew of countries should inject over $700 million for the start-up of the fund. The UAE won plaudits by committing $100 million. The US was lambasted for offering a paltry $17.5m, despite being the world’s largest economy and biggest historical emitter.

The post Six takeaways from 2023’s climate change news appeared first on Climate Home News.

But, as vague ambitions now turn into concrete plans, the reality looks rather different.

A timeline for the early closure of coal power plants is absent from the investment blueprint for the Just Energy Transition Partnership (Jetp) unveiled at a Cop28 side event on Friday. The government expects instead to operate plants “flexibly” and to rely on the controversial co-firing of biomass and ammonia with coal.

Rich countries have also largely backtracked on their initial promise to offer financial support on more attractive terms than Vietnam could already secure from investors. Nearly 60% of the money will be provided as commercial loans, while the tiny share of grants available is primarily earmarked for technical support, the 223-page document shows.

Leo Roberts, a coal transition expert at E3G, said there are “major reasons” to be concerned.

“The investment plan is no longer the pathway to replacing coal power with clean alternatives the Jetp originally promised. Instead, it focuses on expensive or unproven technologies,” he added. “Those directly undermine the pace and scale of the energy transition.”

Hydropower push

Nearly a year after the initial announcement, Vietnam’s prime minister Pham Minh Chinh has mapped out how Vietnam aims to spend the $15.5 billion pledged by G7 nations to boost the deployment of renewables and cut dependence on coal.

Under the agreement, Vietnam aims to peak its emissions by 2030 – five years earlier than planned – and source close to half of its power from renewable energy within the same timeframe.

The development of dozens of hydropower projects across the country forms the backbone of the government’s strategy to hit the targets. A significant proportion of the donors’ money is already directly allocated to those projects. While the plants are a source of low-emission energy, the construction of dams and reservoirs has caused social and environmental issues in the country, including displacement and water scarcity.

The Vietnamese government also plans to expand its power grid, bolster battery storage, and invest in offshore wind and solar.

Contested coal conversion

New coal plants will continue to be built until 2030, while the government drafts a more detailed plan to deal with existing ones.

A phase-out of coal power plants at a large scale “is not feasible in the near-term” – the investment plan states – “but some older plants may be able to transition to alternative energy sources and uses”. In particular, those that have operating for at least 20 years will begin a phased conversion to biomass and ammonia “provided the price is right”.

NGOs have criticised the use of biomass co-firing, on the basis it prolongs the life of coal plants, emits more CO2 than is commonly accounted for and harms forest ecosystems. Ammonia co-firing is “very costly and has limited feasibility for deployment at scale”, according to E3G.

Loans not grants

A major issue is rich countries are reluctant to commit public money as grants. None have directly allocated finance to retire coal plants early. The plan refers to a need for social security and retraining of workers affected by the transition, but it is unclear who will pay for this.

Contributors prefer to invest in renewable energy projects, which bring a return through electricity sales.

Over half of the $8 billion in public finance will be “commercial” loans disbursed by development banks. Cheaper loans on concessional terms represent roughly a third of the package. Grants make up less than 4% of the money offered by governments, with guarantees and equity contributing to the total.

Commercial banks, part of the GFANZ coalition, are expected to invest the remaining $7.5 billion of the package.

At the launch event, the Vietnamese prime minister was flanked by the EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen and the UK net zero minister Claire Coutinho.

Von der Leyen called the partnership “a success story”. It is “a good example of everything we want to achieve here at Cop28,” she said. “We want to bring emissions down while driving economic growth up.”

She was echoed by Coutinho, who told Minh Chinh “we are uniting all our efforts behind you”. The Jetp model is “powerful”, she added, “because it is just”.

Silence over environmentalists’ crackdown

Neither of them raised concerns about human rights. The Vietnamese government has brutally cracked down on the civil society representatives that would normally have been key stakeholders in the programme.

Five environmentalists have been jailed in the last two years on tax evasion charges, which human rights groups say are trumped-up accusations. In the most recent case, Hoang Thi Minh Hong, director of the campaign group CHANGE, was handed a three-year prison sentence and a 100 million Vietnamese dong ($4,100) fine last September.

Vietnamese campaigner Hoang Thi Minh Hong was sentenced to three years in prison last September. Photo: CHANGE/350Vietnam

Two weeks earlier Ngo Thi To Nhien, director of an independent energy policy think-tank, had been arrested on a charge of “appropriating documents of agencies and organizations”. Nhien worked for the EU, the UN, and the World Bank and, before her detention, had reportedly provided technical advice for the development of the Jetp.

At the time, the EU, Germany, the US, and UK said they were deeply concerned about the imprisonment of environmentalists.

Campaigners decried the silence over the crackdown at the investment plan launch.

“We urge multilateral development banks and donor governments not to bulldoze ahead with the Jetp,” said Tanya Lee Roberts Davis, NGO Forum on ADB’s Just Transitions Advocacy Coordinator. “Doing so would mean acting as complicit bystanders in the silencing and reprisals faced by community rights, workers’, environmental, and climate advocates.”

The post Vietnam charts uncertain coal path as finance falls short appeared first on Climate Home News.

At the G20 summit on the island of Bali last December, Indonesia and a group of rich countries and banks announced a $20 billion deal to move the Southeast Asian nation from coal to clean energy.

But this announcement left a lot of the details vague. Since then, Indonesia has been pushing for the funders to provide grants instead of loans, which add to the country’s debt burden.

Yesterday, Indonesia published its investment plan which revealed that some of its climate commitments had been watered down.

The reason is that the funding made available by international partners was not adequate, according to Fabby Tumiwa, director of the Institute for Essential Services Reform (IESR) and part of a working group advising the Indonesian government.

“I am disappointed because we expected the plan could be aligned with Paris Agreement targets”, Tumiwa told Climate Home. “This pushes the JETP further away from that”.

Targets watered down

A draft plan seen by Climate Home in August said Indonesia would retire a sixth of its coal-fired power plant capacity by 2030.

But that target was dropped from yesterday’s final version. Instead, Indonesia now plans to start shutting down coal plants before their scheduled closure no earlier than 2035.

Meanwhile, it plans a massive scale-up of renewables and a reduction of the capacity of existing coal plants in order to get to its 2030 emission reduction target.

In September, an Indonesian government official told Reuters: “It is very clear that they [Western nations] are not eager to provide financing for early retirement”.

The government has also dropped a target to peak its power sector’s emissions at 290 million tonnes of carbon dioxide by 2030.

Captive plants headache

While the new target of 250 million tonnes looks more ambitious, Tumiwa said it is less so because it excludes coal power plants known as captive.

These are power plants that do not provide general electricity to the public but power specific industries like Indonesia’s fast-expanding nickel sector.

The blueprint unveiled this week excludes these so-called captive plants from its calculations altogether, as “more work is required to develop a viable decarbonization plan” for them, the document says.

Rich nations offer loans not grants for Vietnam’s coal transition

This issue, which delayed the publication of the plan in August, has been complicated by the use of wrong assumptions in the modelling for the targets agreed upon last year when the deal was first announced.

“The number of captive plants is way higher than what it previously thought”, said Tumiwa.

The consequence is that reaching the headline emission peaking target promised in the original commitment is “extremely difficult”, as the document now acknowledges.

“Indonesia’s power sector, accounting for the full extent of off-grid captive power, is likely to exceed this target”, it concluded.

Loans not grants

Despite Indonesia’s complaints, the investment plan reveals that the vast majority of the finance is in the form of loans and grants make up just 2.5% of the money.

About three-fifths of the money are loans on better than commercial terms while the rest is bank guarantees and ordinary loans at commercial interest rates.

The US is the biggest funder but its finance is dominated by commercial loans and a multilateral development bank guarantee.

The European Union and European nations like France, Germany – as well as Canada – are providing grants and concessional loans.

The investment plan is subject to public consultation so is not completely final.

The post Indonesia delays coal closure plans after finance row with rich nations appeared first on Climate Home News.

The documents, which were finalised by donor countries in late October, reveal for the first time the breakdown of the $15.5 billion pledge that G7 countries and partners made in December to help the Southeast Asian manufacturing hub and heavy coal user reach net-zero emissions by 2050.

Vietnam pushed for a large share of grants and cheap funding to smooth its planned costly phase-out of coal-fired power plants and replace them with wind farms and other renewables sources, but donors offered mostly expensive loans at market rates amid chronic delays in the country’s power projects.

China objects to UN fund warnings on solar’s forced labour risks

Donors have struggled in climate talks with other developing partners: an $8.5 billion plan for South Africa was adopted in 2021 but has yet to deliver concrete results, and Indonesia has delayed its investment plan linked to donors’ $20 billion pledges.

400+ projects

Vietnam remains committed to cooperating and has prepared a draft list, seen by Reuters, of reform commitments and over 400 projects which could receive G7 money, including 272 on energy infrastructure such as wind and solar farms, power grid upgrades and battery storage systems.

Ahead of the UN Climate Change Conference which begins on 30 November in Dubai, the list needs the approval of international partners who have asked for more ambitious regulatory reforms and the involvement of the civil society in decisions to fight climate change, one official from a donor partner said.

The authoritarian government of Vietnam has jailed five environmental campaigners in the last two years.

Vietnam’s ministries of finance and environment did not reply to requests for comment.

The current G7 offer, which was circulated among selected experts last week, includes $321.5 million in grants, almost entirely from the European Union and EU states, which together are the top financial supporters.

Another $2.7 billion are in concessional loans at low interest rates, of which about two-thirds are provided by the EU, Germany and France, and the other third by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) – with a small portion from Canada.

The overall public funding was slightly increased to $8 billion from the $7.75 billion pledged in December, but over half is in commercial loans at market rates, which Vietnam has been reluctant to accept – especially in the current global context of high interest rates.

The remaining $7.5 billion are expected to come from private investors in costly loans, but those investments hinge on regulatory reforms and the quality of specific projects, the documents said.

Saving the Three Basins means stopping fossil fuel expansion

Washington and Hanoi upgraded their relations to the highest diplomatic status in September, and the United States has pledged $1 billion, almost exclusively in loans at market rates.

Coal generation rising

A climate expert, who declined to be named amid the crackdown in Vietnam on energy experts and activists, said the amount of grants was very low and may not be enough to convince Hanoi to phase out coal.

To finance its power generation plans Vietnam needs roughly $135 billion until 2030 and much more by mid-century, according to government estimates. G7 funds are for an initial three-five year period and are meant to attract much larger private investments.

Under Vietnam’s plans which raised eyebrows among donors when they were published in May, energy generated from coal will increase until 2030, before falling in the following two decades. As a share of total power output, however, coal is expected to drop to 20% in 2030 from 31% in 2020.

The post Rich nations offer loans not grants for Vietnam’s coal transition appeared first on Climate Home News.

A court in Ho Chi Minh City sentenced Hoang Thi Minh Hong on Thursday to three years in prison for dodging $275,000 in taxes related to her climate campaign group CHANGE, her lawyer said. In addition to the jail term, she was fined 100 million Vietnamese dong ($4,100).

The 50-year-old is at least the fifth climate and environmental campaigner to be jailed on tax evasion charges in the last two years in Vietnam. The trial only lasted half a day after Hong pled guilty to charges of dodging tax payments during the 2012-2022 period.

“This conviction is a total fraud, nobody should be fooled by it,” Ben Swanton, co-director of The 88 Project charity told Reuters. “This is yet another example of the law being weaponised to persecute climate activists who are fighting to save the planet”.

String of arrests

Hong’s imprisonment comes two weeks after the arrest of Ngo Thi To Nhien, director of the Vietnam Initiative for Energy Transition, an independent energy policy think-tank.

Nhien worked for the EU, the UN, and the World Bank and was reportedly providing technical advice for the development of the Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP) – a $15.5 billion clean energy financing deal made between Vietnam and G7 nations plus the EU, Norway and Denmark.

Vietnam’s energy transition deal is a ‘black box’, partner warns

The continued crackdown on climate experts and activists poses serious questions to the group of rich nations and investors partnering with the Vietnamese government on a coal-to-clean energy transition.

The US government is “deeply concerned” by Hong’s sentencing, a State Department spokesperson said. “We urge Vietnam to ensure its actions are consistent with the human rights provisions of Vietnam’s constitution and its international commitments, including to consult with non-government stakeholders as part of the Just Energy Transition Partnership (Jetp)”, it added.

‘Just’ transition?

Announced in December 2022, the agreement stated the need for the media and NGOs to be included in the process “so as to ensure a broad social consensus” and ensure the transition to be “just and equitable”. Campaign group Global Witness has criticised the language as “weak”.

At UN climate summit big polluters’ absence speaks volumes

The treatment of civil society and energy experts had been a sticking point in negotiations. A spokesperson for the German government, which is also funding the JETP, told Climate Home in November 2022 it had raised human rights concerns with the Vietnamese government. A separate source with knowledge of those discussions said the Germans “received significant pushback”.

But the spokesperson also hoped that the deal could help activists. “With the agreement on the JETP, we also hope to be able to send a positive signal to climate activists,” the spokesperson said at the time.

The German government “will continue to demand” the active participation of civil society in the energy transition process, a spokesperson told Climate Home News after Hong’s imprisonment. “The German Government regularly takes its opportunities to raise and present its concerns to partners [of the Jetp] and the Vietnamese government”, it added.

Concerns over deal

Vietnam is a one-party state run by the Communist party without democratic elections. It ranks low on human rights indexes.

When Hoang Thi Minh Hong was first detained in June, the German government said it was concerned by the arrest and viewed it “critically” in regards to the implementation of the Jetp.

Norly Mercado is the Asia Regional Director of 350.org, a partner organization of CHANGE. She said the “unjust imprisonment of fearless changemakers like Hong not only imperils initiatives within Vietnam such as its JETP deal, but also undermines the country’s vital role in shaping a fair and equitable response to the urgent climate crisis”.

Climate Home News has reached out to the UK government and the European Commission for comment.

The article was updated on 29/9 to include comments from the German and US governments.

The post Vietnamese climate activist jailed in ‘unjust’ government crackdown appeared first on Climate Home News.

But disagreements between Indonesia and the wealthy countries backing it meant that the launch was delayed.

What were they arguing over? You guessed it – money. Specifically, how much of the $20 billion promised should be grants versus loans?

The wealthy countries represented by the US and Japan say 0.8%, while Indonesia says ‘a lot more than that please!’

While negotiations continue, the Indonesian government official in charge told Climate Home News they need to see how much is being put on the plate before committing to specific targets.

The pioneer of energy transition partnerships, South Africa, got 3%, which now looks positively generous in comparison. Is it any wonder India hasn’t followed through on talk about a similar deal?

This week’s news:

• Devastating Beijing floods test China’s ‘sponge cities’
• China plans to recycle solar panels and wind turbines
• Indonesia delays $20bn green plan, after split with rich nations on grants and new coal plants
• US sparks controversy by backing oil company’s carbon-sucking plans
• One of 2023’s most extreme heatwaves is happening in the middle of winter

Carbon removal hijacked?

While the US plays Scrooge in Jakarta, back in Washington it’s ‘hey big spender’!

The government is giving out up to $1.2 billion for companies to invest in machines that are meant to suck carbon out of the atmosphere.

That’s all good in principle – the clever folks at the IPCC say we’re going to need this technology to compensate for the hardest-to-clean-up sectors.

But a big chunk will go to Occidental, whose CEO admits she sees these machines as a way to prolong their oil pumping business. Notably, this is not one of the hardest to clean up sectors.

With the Saudis lobbying the IPCC to emphasise carbon removal and Japanese coal plant owner Mitsubishi investing in it, is the fossil fuel industry hijacking the concept for its own ends?

The post Money row delays green plan – Climate Weekly appeared first on Climate Home News.

What does a just energy transition mean for the world’s least developed countries where energy access, especially in rural areas, is a priority for national development?

Last week, a Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP) between Senegal, France, Germany, and the EU was announced at the Summit for a New Global Financial Pact in Paris.

This means Senegal’s government has committed to reaching 40% of renewable energy in the electricity mix, in exchange for €2.5 billion ($2.7bn) from France, Germany, the UK, Canada and the EU.

As the director of the Senegalese think-tank ENDA Energie, my colleagues and I worked to ensure that this deal would not hinder Senegal’s national development goals and that energy access remains a priority of our country.

US ‘still on the fence’ as nations debate global shipping emission tax

First, let us address the elephant in the room – Senegal has been gearing up to become a major gas producer to help develop its economy.

It has been said that revenues from gas will help with the country’s investment in transport, electrification, health, and education. Other arguments for gas have asked whether Global North countries financing renewables in Senegal are merely dictating what we need to do, stopping us from being a prosperous country.

These arguments can be convincing but they are misleading. First, climate and development goals can be achieved together and second, we are changing the way international cooperation works. Our experience with JETP Senegal has given national actors the agency to actively participate in crafting an international deal with the Global North.

International cooperation between the Global North and the Global South is usually done with barely any inputs from the beneficiary countries. This must change if we want to see success in the implementation of such projects.

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This is why we ensured that JETP Senegal is shaped by national actors. We led a process in Senegal that gathered a broad range of local stakeholders – from government, research, civil society, and the private sector – where we worked on a realistic vision for our country.

After a series of discussions we came to a consensus that 40% of renewable energy in the electricity mix is an ambitious yet achievable target, especially provided with international support.

This bottom-up approach has given us lessons on how international cooperation must be conducted. First, having a domestically inclusive and nationally-led process empowers countries like Senegal to achieve their vision for national development.

Instead of being treated merely as beneficiaries where climate targets are dictated to us, an inclusive process gives us the agency to decide, based on scientific data and the realities of our country, what can be realistically achieved without compromising on other national development goals. As a result, the JETP-Senegal has remained in line with our vision of universal energy access in the country.

Additionally, this bottom-up process creates buy-in into the vision from national stakeholders and given broader support, can help facilitate its implementation.

Given that the vision of the JETP was supported by different groups nationally through multi-actor dialogue, it ensures that the priorities remain the same over time, even through changes in government leadership. This is opposed to traditional top-down approaches that risk national and climate goals are abandoned as national leadership changes.

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Second, aligning climate and development goals is crucial for developing and least developed countries. Exclusively focusing on climate targets is a lost opportunity for national development, especially when there is enough evidence to show that both can be achieved simultaneously.

Further, a narrow focus on climate targets is unlikely to garner support from domestic actors for the energy transition, especially in lower- and middle-income countries.

In Senegal, a country where 30% of households lack access to electricity (as of 2018), universal electricity access has been an important development goal. In this case, JETP aligns the target of 40% renewable energy with very ambitious targets for reaching universal electricity access by 2025

Third, we learned that while the focus on energy transformations is important to achieve national development, it is only one part of the solution. A clean, affordable and reliable supply of energy is a key driver of transformations in other sectors, including agriculture, industry and transport.

However, during the process of identifying Senegalese vision, we have also identified the need to transform agriculture, industry, and urban systems. JETPs are therefore not a one-stop solution and must be complemented by financial cooperation that will enable a low-greenhouse gas and resilient transformation of the whole economy. This is particularly so given that other sectors than energy experience even greater challenges in accessing adequate amounts of finance.

Our experience in leading the national process to achieve the best deal on energy transition in Senegal has been an opportunity to show how international cooperation should be conducted. Contrary to some arguments that the Senegalese have no say in international agreements like JETP, we were able to create an international agreement that was shaped by national actors. We are not just passive subjects, we will lead the way in shaping the future of our country.

Secou Sarr is the director of ENDA Energie

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The coal to clean credit initiative aims to plug funding gaps in the Just Energy Transition Partnerships (Jetp) agreed last year between wealthy nations and Indonesia, South Africa and Vietnam to wean them off coal power.

Currently in the late stage of development, the offsetting scheme is linked to the early closure of coal plants and their replacement with renewable energy. The greenhouse gas emissions avoided in the transition would be monetised through carbon credits.

Nations or companies will be able to buy them to compensate for their direct greenhouse gas emissions in the pursuit of their own climate targets.

Seismic change

Joseph Curtin, a managing director at the Rockefeller Foundation and one of the scheme’s creators, says these carbon credits could be “a game-changer” in fast-tracking the replacement of coal with clean power in emerging economies.

“Carbon credit finance will be instrumental in getting the industry moving. We see it as making up for some of the weaknesses [in Jetp deals],” he told Climate Home. “ This carbon finance will blend with and unlock private and concessional [with more generous terms than offered in the market] capital, which is theoretically available to support the just energy transition but is not flowing”.

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But experts warn there are a number of concerns about using carbon finance to phase out coal, especially given the massive number of credits potentially on the line. The project developers hope to retire dozens of coal plants with support from carbon credit finance, leading to gigatons of avoided emissions and, as a result, offsets.

“Phasing out coal plants is absolutely essential, but whether or not this should be eligible for carbon crediting is another question entirely,” Jonathan Crook from Carbon Market Watch told Climate Home. “If the credits were to be generated with an unrealistic baseline or aren’t additional in nature, then they actually would undermine ambition”.

Jetp ambitions

Last year a consortium of rich countries – made up of G7 nations plus the EU, Norway and Denmark – development banks and private financiers signed Jetp deals with Indonesia, Vietnam and South Africa.

The multi-billion dollar agreements are supposed to help recipient countries move away from coal which generates most of their electricity while supporting workers in the transition.

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The programmes, which are at various stages of implementation, have attracted some criticism over the type of financing.

Recipient countries have been calling for grants and cheap loans because they don’t want to be burdened with more debt. But G7 countries with tight purse strings have been pushing back on those terms.

“Let’s be honest, there is very little new truly concessional capital on the table and a lot of disappointment in Jetp countries,” says Curtin, who believes new solutions need to be developed to keep the green deals on course.

Carbon credit solution

The idea of using carbon credits to fund energy transition projects in coal-reliant countries was floated at the end of last year by John Kerry, the US special envoy on climate. Kerry said the private sector could be “enticed to the table because you then have a way of them getting something they need and want, which may be a credit towards their goal”.

Some of the Jetp partners, however, have been sceptical about this solution. The German minister Jochen Flasbarth told reporters at Cop27 they had “some concerns that the commitments we gave as governments should not be replaced by private offsetting”.

About 60% of Indonesia’s electricity is produced from coal. Photo: Ezagren

For months, a group of philanthropies involved in Jetp and carbon market specialists have been busy trying to turn this into reality. They have secured a partnership with the Indonesian government, begun talks with South Africa and Vietnam, and sounded out interest from investors.

Crucially, they have also been working on the thorny matter of setting the rules for this new type of offset. The methodology will determine which projects qualify, and how the emission reductions are calculated and translated into carbon credits. Climate Home News has not been able to see the terms which are still under discussion.

Number of concerns

Carbon Market Watch’s Crook says it’s difficult to comment on specifics without consulting the methodology but he underlines how delicate the task is.

“There a number of factors that would have a large impact on the volume of credits generated and the overall credibility of such an approach,” he said. “The stringency of additionality tests, the assumptions on the future viability of coal plants and the capacity at which they would run.”

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Additionality is one of the key tests of any offsetting project: in simple terms, this concept boils down to whether the project would have been possible without carbon credit financing.

Proving this could be tricky in a scenario where multiple funding streams – including public finance – are being directed at the same set of activities. In Indonesia, for example, five separate energy transition schemes are moving ahead at the same time.

Renewable energy link

Curtin says the initiative is targeting “relatively new coal plants” with power purchasing agreements of 20-30 years. He added the methodology includes a series of tests assessing regulatory, economic and financial conditions to prove additionality.

The rules will also determine how to establish a direct link between the closure of a coal plant and the rollout of renewable sources to make up for the electricity shortfall. The simplest solution under consideration involves the installation of renewables on the same site as the coal plant. But the programme developers say there will be a number of options available.

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Curtin says the role of gas in this scheme “has not been quite bottomed out yet”. “We don’t want new gas plants to be built to replace coal ones, but some gas may be needed to bring in the renewables,” he added. The prospect of expanding gas consumption, even just temporarily while renewables ramp up, would likely anger campaigners keeping an eye on the Jetps implementation.

Flooding the carbon market

Curtin acknowledges that devising the methodology has been “extremely difficult and technically challenging”. He says the initiative is striving for the “Goldilocks zone between extremely strong environmental integrity and yet having to be realistic to work on the ground”.

The initiative is eager to unveil the rules at Cop28 in November and clinch a first project agreement next year. South Pole, one of the world’s biggest project developers, will be in charge of the implementation on the ground.

If the scheme reaches their stated ambition, it could have far-reaching consequences not only for the Jetp, but for carbon markets more widely.

Buyers appeal

At scale, coal-to-clean offsets could in fact rise to dominate the carbon market. Each coal plant closure is expected to generate tens of millions of credits. Fewer than twenty of the world’s biggest forest protection offsets produce a similar volume of offsets.

The future buyers of the credits will also be closely watched. Curtin says the initiative has so far attracted the most interest from countries keen to purchase credits under article 6.2 of the Paris Agreement.

This is a mechanism allowing countries to exchange offsets through bilateral agreements and count them towards their climate goals, or nationally determined contributions (NDCs).

Governments like Switzerland, Singapore, Japan and South Korea have shown the most interest in using article 6.2.

Given the high stakes, Carbon Market Watch’s Crook said it is paramount to get the scheme right. “One mustn’t forget the broader context: these credits — which could be issued at a huge scale — will be used to offset real ongoing emissions,” he said. “If the finer details end up being wrong, then you have a serious problem”.

This article was updated on 22 June to make the scheme’s name more prominent

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But they warned the South African government should not row back from a clear commitment to cutting long-term emissions.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa told Parliament last week the timetable to shift away from coal “must be relooked at” while the country struggles with crippling daily blackouts.

The US, UK, EU, Germany and France are contributing funds for a landmark plan, known as a Just Energy Transition Partnership (JetP) to clean up South Africa’s coal-reliant electricity system.

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A spokesperson for the German development ministry told Climate Home the group of rich countries behind the JetP show “understanding for the current emergency and sees the need for short-term measures” in South Africa.

But they also warned against backsliding on the coal to clean energy transition: “A clear commitment by the South African government to long-term emission reduction strategies is and remains an important component of our cooperation”.

Uncertain plans

The programme hinges on the ability to replace most of its 14 existing coal power plants with solar and wind power.

South Africa’s coal plants often produce less electricity than the country needs and state-owned energy firm Eskom respond by implementing planned power cuts, which it calls load shedding.

These can last up to 10 hours and have significantly worsened over the last year, angering citizens and businesses and damaging Ramaphosa’s popularity ahead of elections next year.

Ageing and unreliable coal-fired power plants frequently breaking down and Eskom’s dire financial situation have been blamed for the crisis.

Now the government is considering delaying the closure of further coal power plants to help ease electricity cuts.

“Our own pace”

Rampaphosa told the National Assembly last week that “we will transition to cleaner energy but at our own pace and own time”.

“We have got to do it, taking into account the needs of our people and the requirements of energy security”, he added.

Alongside the closure and repurposing of coal-fired power plants, the partnership is also meant to cover an expansion of social protection and retraining for workers who lose their jobs.

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But an investigation by Climate Home News and Oxpeckers found coal-reliant communities have scarce details on how funds for re-skilling will be invested.

The uncertain prospects are fuelling hostility to the programme in coal heartlands. A proposal from a business group to keep coal power plants alive is gaining support from local politicians and some residents, Climate Home News has found.

Debt concerns

The type of financing offered has been another continuing sticking point in the rich nations partnership with South Africa.

Grants make up only 3% of the package. The rest is loans, raising concerns South Africa’s debt burden.

Just over half of the funding is earmarked as concessional loans, with better-borrowing terms than South Africa can access on the open market.

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Like South Africa, Germany has kept coal plants open for longer than it wanted because of a short-term crisis.

After Russia invaded Ukraine, Germany and the rest of Europe sought to drastically reduce their reliance on Russian gas.

To ensure that the supply of electricity met demand over the winter of 2022, Germany temporarily re-opened two coal power plants. Overall though, the crisis has sped up Europe’s transition away from fossil fuels to renewables.

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Nelly Sigudla, a qualified fire watcher and part-time control room operator at Duvha power station in Mpumalanga, South Africa’s energy capital, worries for her future, when her main source of income gets unplugged.

The mother of four children lives in Benicon Park, an informal settlement next to the coal-fired power station, which is scheduled to be decommissioned by Eskom – South Africa’s public electricity company – between 2031 and 2034.

Like many employees in the coal-mining industry, Sigudla fears her qualifications won’t be enough in the near future, when renewables take over coal as South Africa’s primary source of new energy, risking becoming unemployable.

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The country, which depends on coal for about 85% of its electricity, is home to one of the largest energy experiments in the world: an $8.5-billion deal with a group of rich nations – including the United States, United Kingdom and the European Union – to transition towards renewable energy.

For solar panels and wind turbines to operate, South Africa will have to redirect coal workers towards new jobs in the renewable energy sector, such as construction, electrical engineering and information technology.

But an investigation by Oxpeckers Investigative Environmental Journalism and Climate Home News found a major skills gap in coal-reliant communities and a lack of clarity on how funds for reskilling will be implemented.

Sigudla said the transition to green energy sources in Mpumalanga is difficult to welcome. From a community perspective it could bring even more poverty. The region has a soaring unemployment rate of 38%, and more than 100,000 jobs depend on coal.

“When the renewable sector kicks in, what fire am I going to watch?” Sigudha asks. “No one has come to the communities to tell us about new skills programmes that we can follow to acquire skills that will be needed in future.”

Reskilling programmes

The Just Energy Transition Investment Plan (JET-IP), a document that is guiding South Africa’s move to renewables, includes an investment of nearly R2.7-billion ($151 million) for reskilling programmes across the country.

In Mpumalanga, R750-million ($42 million) is allocated to “investing in youth” – including education, training, work experience and placements – and R5.6-billion ($310 million) to “caring for coal workers”, which includes re-skilling, redeployment, placement and temporary income support.

Funds would not only come from the JET partnership, but also from government budgets, venture capital and multilateral banks.

According to the JET-IP, the government plans to set up a national skills hub to advise on reskilling needs, and R1,6-billion ($89 million) will be allocated to creating pilot training centres known as “skills development zones” in Mpumalanga, Eastern Cape and Northern Cape provinces.

These pilot zones will be run by technical colleges and support the development of new skills and courses, aiming to “ enhance the employability of graduates”, says the JET-IP.

One of the options to set up facilities for the training centres is to use old decommissioned coal plants. This was one of the options for the Komati power station, the first one to shut down, in October 2022, according to a recently published report by environmental justice organisation GroundWork.

But details about how these training centres would actually become operational are scarce.

Development zones

Blessing Manale, spokesperson for the Presidential Climate Commission (PCC), an independent multi-stakeholder body established by President Cyril Ramaphosa to oversee the country’s transition, was unable to indicate when the skills development zones will start operations.

Additionally, he acknowledged that skills development is severely under-prioritised, adding “all stakeholder groups have raised this as a fundamental weakness in the JET-IP”.

“In the PCC’s view, much work needs to be done, both to quantify the needs for skills development, and to upskill the workforce and new entrants – in particular youth and young women,” Manale said.

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Manale added the transformation of technical and vocational colleges, typically aimed at adults looking for new technical skills, is “fundamental”. The PCC is rolling out a new programme on skills for the energy transition along with the departments of education and energy, he said. 

But there needs to be more clarity on the skills needed for the decommissioning of coal-fired plants, he said.

“This gives rise to questions around who will actually provide the training required for upskilling workers in the coal value chain, design curricula for educational institutions where skills development will take place, and how this can be funded,” Manale told Oxpeckers.

For workers in the coal industry such as Nelly Sigudla (above), the transition to green energy sources in Mpumalanga is difficult to welcome. (Photo: Ashraf Hendriks)

Vocational training

Mpumalanga has three technical and vocational education and training (TVET) colleges that fall under the department of higher education and training (DHET). They focus on “preparing students to become functional workers in a skilled trade”.

These colleges, based in Ehlanzeni, Gert Sibande and Nkangala districts, provide practical skills training for the mining and fossil fuel industries, among other courses. At the start of the year, the department reported that more than 500,000 students had enrolled at TVET colleges countrywide.

Oxpeckers and Climate Home reached out via email to all three TVET colleges, as well as the DHET and several other tertiary institutions in the province, to understand how skills development courses currently on offer could be applicable to the green energy sector. Similar questions were also sent to Eskom’s Academy of Learning and the South African Renewable Energy Technology Centre. Despite follow-up phone calls, no responses were received at the time of publication.

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The curricula of the TVET colleges and other educational facilities needs to change to achieve the energy transition, said professor Victor Munnik, co-author of the Contested Transition report recently released by GroundWork.

Training and reskilling for renewables must be “fit for purpose”, he said. “It should be aimed at a society that lives on renewable energy and understands how it works. There are specific specialised skills involved; for example, for the grid to become a smart grid it has to integrate a lot of IT technologies.”

Changes in the education system need to include school courses “to prepare young people not just to work in the new economy but to actively shape it and be part of it”, Munnik said.

Wendy Poulton, secretary general of the South African National Energy Association, added that there is a scarcity of specialist technical and managerial skills in the renewable energy sector. “This will require the education, training and upskilling of engineers and technicians to shift into renewables,” she said.

Happy Sithole, NUM health and safety chairperson in the Highveld region and an Eskom shop steward, says he has no knowledge of skills development zones in Mpumalanga. (Photo: Ashraf Hendriks)

Union concerns

The regional chairperson of National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) in the Mpumalanga Highveld region, Malekutu Motubatse, is concerned that the current courses offered at TVET colleges and other education facilities still produce learners that will be unemployed in the near future.

Next to each power station there is a coal mine that is used for the purpose of providing coal to the power station, he said. “So the reskilling should be a reskilling of everyone. If the government is talking about reskilling, who is going to be reskilled, Eskom employees or mine employees? Let’s assume that it talks to Eskom employees, then where does it leave the coal mine workers?”

Happy Sithole, NUM health and safety chairperson in the Highveld region and an Eskom shop steward, believes not many artisanal coal miners - who conduct small scale mining - will be employed in the renewables sector.

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“We are talking about artisans, a job that pays well. If you change from coal to renewables, what’s going to happen to them?”

Sithole said he has no knowledge of skills development zones in Mpumalanga: “We find ourselves trying to understand what this is, because as NUM we have not seen any development.”

NUM is also unaware of a training facility that is supposed to be set up at Komati power station, which was decommissioned in October 2022 and is punted as a model for repurposing, Sithole said.

“We have not heard of Komati becoming a training facility. All we know about Komati is that there is intent to demolish it. There’s a lot of information that needs to be cleared up, and it’s difficult to get answers,” he said.

Gaylor Montmasson-Clair, a senior economist at Trade & Industrial Policy Strategies (TIPS), an economic research institution, said Eskom’s skilled workforce has a higher chance of finding alternative jobs in other industries, such as electricians, for example.

But coal miners might not have the same luck. “To be blunt, we must stop the delusion that the bulk of the people who are employed in coal mining are going to be employed in renewable energy. That narrative just makes no sense,” Montmasson-Clair said.

Duvha power station, located in Mpumalanga, South Africa, is scheduled to be decommissioned between 2031 and 2034. (Photo: Ashraf Hendricks)

Construction jobs

Peter Venn, chief executive of Seriti Green, said the transition will create more jobs in the construction sector in the coming years. “We see a positive job growth in the renewable space for the next 10 years through the construction period,” he said.

Seriti Green is an offshoot of a mining company and will soon begin construction on South Africa’s largest wind farm in Mpumalanga, with power supply due to come online by 2025.

With Seriti being on both sides of the transition from coal mining to renewable energy supply, Venn emphasises the importance of training programmes for the skills required in the renewable sector.

“The Cape Peninsula University has partnered with Komati power station and Eskom to deliver skills in Mpumalanga. And there are other organisations offering significant renewable energy skills,” he said.

“Renewables require across-the-spectrum skills. All the back-office skills are required, civil and electrical skills are required; it goes into IT, security, data analytics, preventative maintenance,” Venn said.

Middelburg resident Emanuel Marutle says the current education system is not even able to provide skills for learners to work in the coal-mining sector, making a transition towards renewables even more difficult.  (Photo: Ashraf Hendriks)

Young workers

According to the PCC, workers in the coal-mining sector are relatively young, with a median age of 38 years. About 90% of those employed in Mpumalanga are semi-skilled (74%), or low-skilled (17%) workers.

The urgency for the skills they will need to diversify is heightened by the fact that transition planning is developing in the context of already high unemployment, poverty and inequality, the PCC says.

“These dynamics make skills diversification more complex as the just transition ought to manage job losses and create employment opportunities in a country with an unemployment rate of 33.9%,” said Manale.

Emanuel Marutle, a resident of the coal fields in Middelburg, told Oxpeckers he is worried the education system in Mpumalanga doesn’t have the resources to help affected community members gain practical skills to weather the transition.

“The current education system is not even able to provide skills for learners to work in the coal-mining sector, so how will it equip people with the skills needed in the renewables sector?”

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Marutle said during a community consultation about the transition held “by government people from Johannesburg” in 2022, locals were promised that people from their municipality would be taken to undergo training for the renewable sector. This has not happened, he said.

Given Masina, another local and a member of the Khuthala environmental group, said he hasn’t heard anything about any reskilling, training, or skills development in Mpumalanga.

“Our kids are studying in the fields of coal, but coal is dying. People will be left without knowing what they can do,” he said. “If people are skilled, they can transfer skills to other people in the communities so that they have chances of being employed.”

This investigation by Climate Home News and Oxpeckers Investigative Environmental Journalism was produced with the support of the Pulitzer Center, and is part of a series on South Africa's Renewables Revolution.

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In an 50-minute televised interview, Andre De Ruyter claimed the company he led for three years had been infiltrated by violent organised criminals and that it is riddled with corruption to which the police, state security services, local politicians and central government turned a blind eye.

The ruling African National Congress party responded by calling De Ruyter a “naysayer” with a “rightwing ideological posture” and said his claims about corruption were “unfortunate, irresponsible, and baseless”.

At Cop26 in 2021, the South African government announced it would receive $8.5 billion of loans and grants from rich nations to fund projects like renewable power, electricity transmission lines, electric vehicle production and green hydrogen.

Much of this money will be spent by Eskom and De Ruyter said the deal was done “by and large at Eskom’s intervention”. The agreement, known as a just energy transition partnership (JETP), formed a model for similar deals with Indonesia and Vietnam.

Corruption crusader

Since taking over Eskom in 2019, De Ruyter said he had tried to root out corruption and to start shifting South Africa’s energy system from coal to clean energy. But he said he has been opposed by criminal cartels and by sections of the government and his coffee was poisoned with cyanide in December.

Asked if Eskom was a “feeding trough” for South Africa’s governing party, De Ruyter replied: “I would say the evidence suggests that it is. I expressed my concern to a senior government minister about attempts, in my view, to water down governance around the [JETP] and the response was essentially, you know, you have to be pragmatic. In order to pursue the greater good, you have to enable some people to eat a little bit”.

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De Ruyter did not say if attempts to weaken governance had been succesful. A spokesperson for Germany’s ministry for economic co-operation and development (BMZ) told Climate Home it was “aware of current issues at and around Eskom and in South Africa’s coal sector”.

The spokesperson added that donor countries promising to mobilise the $8.5bn “will jointly work with the government of South Africa to ensure that governance arrangements are in place for any funds that support the Just Energy Transition Partnership” and that every lender “will need to do due diligence around any proposed spending”.

These rich nations will have to “understand” Eskom’s and the South African government’s plans, the spokeperson said. “The continued fight of the government against corruption and crime in the energy sector is essential and also an important pre-condition to reduce the current huge level of load shedding.”

High scrutiny

Saliem Fakir, a South African who heads the Africa Climate Foundation told Climate Home that De Ruyter’s concern was “not far fetched” and that zero tolerance on corruption was necessary to make the energy transition just.

But, he said that investments made under the JETP were likely to be closely scrutinised because it is a high-profile initiative, it is climate finance and because the funds come from abroad.

In December 2022, South Africa’s energy minister Gwede Mantashe accused De Ruyter of “actively agitating for the overthrow of the state” by forcing planned power cuts, known as “load shedding”, on South Africans. Eskom had taken these measures since before De Ruyter became chief in December 2019, as South Africa’s electricity demand often outstrips supply.

After receiving no defence from prime minister Cyril Ramaphosa, De Ruyter handed in his resignation five days later. That same day, before news of his resignation was made public, his personalised coffee mug was poisoned with a mixture of cyanide and rat poison at Eskom’s headquarters. He said this was likely to be a response to his efforts to tackle corruption, sabotage and organised crime.

Criminal cartels

De Ruyter told ETV last week that one billion rand ($50m) was stolen from Eskom every month. The company is currently 423 billion rand ($22bn) in debt, hobbling its ability to end blackouts and carry out the energy transition.

De Ruyter said there are four criminal cartels operating in the province of Mpumalanga, the north-eastern region where most of the country’s coal is dug up and burned in power plants.

He said these cartels have a hit squad of 60-70 “highly trained, well armed” people they call “soldiers” who assassinate opponents and that they pay Eskom employees to sabotage machinery when it suits their business interests.

They bribe Eskom’s buyers, who spend their money on Maserati cars which aren’t registered to their name, wear Louis Vutton clothes and wash their hands in 15-year old whiskey, he said.

De Ruyter said that “vested interests” in the value chain explain why even a gradual energy transition “is so eagerly opposed and with such vehemence”. He quoted a colleague who told him “you are being naive, you aren’t showing the comrades a way to eat”.

Fakir told Climate Home that common scams include over-charging for diesel and stealing good-quality coal and replacing it with low-quality coal or ordinary rocks.

Authorities inaction

De Ruyter said that local and national politicians, the police and security services have failed to act against these cartels, blaming either incompetence or complicity.

He said local politicians in Mpumalanga are “complicit”, that police failed to charge corruption suspects, state security were “missing in action” and at least one unnamed minister had been aware of criminality and failed to act.

He said security services had targetted him for surveillance. In October, he claimed a bugging device was found in his car. Last week, he said a contact in the inspectorate general of intelligence had told him that type of device was “one of ours, we have lots of these”.

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When he travelled to Egypt for Cop27, a state security official travelled with his delegation. De Ruyter said a friend asked this man why he was there and he replied “just keeping an eye on the big guy”.

When his coffee was poisoned in December, he said the police tasked only junior-ranking police officers to investigate who had never heard of cyanide and needed doctors to explain what it was.

“Either this is monumental incomptence or they are just not interested in investigating this,” he said.

The ANC has responded to De Ruyter’s claims by urging him to lay criminal charges. If he doesn’t, the party said, they will bring charges against him for allegedly breaching anti-corruption rules.

In his interview, De Ruyter said he had informed police and advisers to president Cyril Ramaphosa of his concerns.

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