Minister of Forestry, Fisheries and Environment, Barbara Creecy says her department will make the process for renewable energy applications easy in order to fast track it.
She says the complicated bureaucratic process is one of the causes of delay in the implementation of renewable energy.
Speaking to journalists in Cape Town on Friday morning, ahead of the tabling of her Budget Vote Speech in Parliament, Creecy says, “We’re working very hard to cut the red tapes on these applications and in this regard, we have tried to reduce our decision making timeframes from 107 days to 57 days. In addition, there are 15 applications relating to transmission and distribution infrastructure because what we all understand is the fact that grid capacity is the major constraint to scaling up the energy transition.”
Renewable energy
Government says it is currently processing more than 9 000 applications for renewable energy projects as part of addressing the rolling blackouts crisis.
It says this process is part of its environmental impact assessment.
The Minister of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment Barbara Creecy has revealed this in a media briefing in Cape Town ahead of her budget vote speech in Parliament, on Friday afternoon.
She says the renewable projects will be a mixture of solar and wind energy. “In our environmental impact assessment, we have 9 789 megawatts of renewable energy projects that are currently being processed by our department. This is made up of 2 899 megawatts of solar and 6 890 megawatts of wind.”
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In January the African National Congress (ANC) president, Cyril Ramaphosa reiterated the importance of the country moving towards the use of renewable energy.
United States (US) Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen in January visited South Africa and recommitted the world’s largest economy to help South Africa in its multi-billion dollar just transition from coal to renewables.
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