Jack Radmore, Energy programme manager and climate finance lead, GreenCape

Although GreenCape began as a non-profit organisation that drives the widespread adoption of economically viable green economy activities and solutions in the Western Cape, it has expanded to become a national organisation, said Jack Radmore, the organisation’s energy programme manager and climate finance lead.

There are even plans to expand GreenCape’s activities across Africa, he said.

GreenCape envisages a thriving, prosperous Africa, mobilised by the green economy, and it works at the interface between business, government and academia to further this cause.

GreenCape oversaw R58-billion in investment into the South African economy in its first decade of operation. This went along with the creation of 22 000 jobs.

Radmore said GreenCape is “excited to share” its experience with the people of Mpumalanga, as part of the first African chapter of the International Cleantech Network. The collaborative organisation has outgrown its 2009 start as a five-year European Union-funded project to facilitate cooperation between cluster organisations from across the world, although its aim is the same.

Radmore said GreenCape and the Mpumalanga Green Cluster Agency are focused on finding ways to drive on-the-ground investment and jobs in the green economy and “taking a step beyond” simply replacing jobs lost in the transition from a high-carbon to a low-carbon economy and towards “multiplying jobs” in the low-carbon economy.

Investment in the development of a green economy for Mpumalanga, and the job creation that goes with that, is vital to ensuring a “just transition”. Just transition is a catchphrase that encompasses a range of social interventions put in place to secure workers’ rights and livelihoods in the shift to an economy powered by renewable energy and the move away from a purely extractive mode to one that is more reliant on recycling and other sustainable actions.

“In the context of South Africa, simply replacing lost jobs is insufficient,” Radmore said.

A just transition has many aspects, he said. These are:

• Investments in economic activities that require low emissions of greenhouse gases and are “job rich”

• Social dialogue

• Training and skills development

• Social protection

• Local economic diversification

The decentralisation and localisation of economic activities are important drivers of the green economy, Radmore said.

GreenCape, supported by the Embassy of Denmark in South Africa, is involved in two “exciting” green economy projects, he said.

One is aimed at mapping mining rights in Mpumalanga, where it is often difficult to establish which individual or organisation owns mining rights over a pocket of land.

The other is aimed at promoting the decentralisation of the provision of basic services such as power and Wi-Fi.

The mining rights mapping and planning project was born out of the rise in demand for land on which to site independent power producers, in line with the plans outlined in the national government’s Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) for South Africa’s energy production, Radmore said.

Under the IRP’s bid window six, which is now open, 56 bids have been made for the production of renewable energy. Remarkably, none of these bids are for projects in Mpumalanga, even though the province has more “grid availability” (grid “space” through which independent power producers can link the power their projects produce to the national grid) than most of South Africa’s eight other provinces.

What stands in Mpumalanga’s way is the availability of land on which to place renewable energy projects, Radmore said. This is why it is important to map mining rights to assist policymakers to identify land suitable for renewable energy projects. This will also reduce development costs by expediting the time it takes to identify suitable land.

The second project supported by the Danish Embassy aims to alleviate the desperate need for social services in Mpumalanga, Radmore said.

Some of the people in Mpumalanga who do not have access to electricity will have to wait eight years for the service, he said. There are 3.2-million South Africans who do not yet have access to electricity.

The answer to this is a community-led approach to service delivery, in partnership with local municipalities. Discussions have been held with communities to determine what their priorities are. For some, it is home and street lighting; for others, enough power to include Wi-Fi access.