backed by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’s climate and biodiversity fund said it’s setting up a programme to attract investment into South African municipal power grids, which need R319-billion to prepare for the introduction of more renewable energy., will work alongside partners to prepare projects for investment to repair and upgrade dilapidated grids, said Ziyad Cassim, the group’s South African country representative.
“We will shortly announce a coalition of partners who are going to support us in the municipal space,” Cassim said in an interview. “We have three partners who are going to co-invest with us.” He declined to identify them because an official announcement is yet to be made.
The government, which ran electricity generation and transmission as a monopoly for decades, has now allowed significant investment in power plants and is preparing to accept private investment into transmission. Municipalities are expected to follow suit by seeking investment in their distribution grids.
Municipal grids need to adapt from solely accepting electricity supply from the coal-dependent national utility to connecting to a variety of power sources as more solar and wind power plants start up.