Sustainable Growth

16 October 2022

The state of research on renewable energy value chains in South Africa: Firms and employment characteristics

  • Year: 2022
  • Organisation: TIPS and WWF South Africa
  • Author(s): Kate Rivett-Carnac
  • Countries and Regions: South Africa

The Presidential electricity plan announced in July 2022, which is set to relax regulations for private generators and double the size of Bid Window 6 of the Renewable Energy Independent Power Producers Procurement Programme, is intended to drive more renewable energy uptake. This should in turn lead to an increase in the demand for value chain manufactured components and services to RE generators.

Such a demand could create opportunities for South African suppliers and lead to employment creation. This is, however, contingent on local firms being able to respond to the opportunity with appropriate industrial development support from government. To do this, in the case of the manufacturing value chain in particular, an improved understanding is needed of local manufacturing and the firms  producing materials, and their employment characteristics. This is not in place: there is significant research on South African renewable energy industries, but few studies provide details on the value chains supplying the different renewable energy industries. They also do not detail the local firms within these value chains or their employment characteristics. Only a few studies provide information on the materials used to manufacture these inputs (and the jobs associated with the materials used in renewable manufacturing value chains.

This report describes and discusses the major sources of data that exist on renewable energy firms and employment in these value chains. It concludes with some ideas on how and where to build this knowledge base.

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