I am pleased to announce that we have now concluded the signing of the Memorandums of Understanding (MOUs) with all six of the candidate municipalities participating in the Municipal Energy Resilience (MER) Initiative in the Western Cape.  

This follows a ceremonial signing with the Executive Mayor of Stellenbosch, Alderman Gesie Van Deventer, on behalf of Stellenbosch Municipality who will be participating in the first phase of the MER Initiative in this financial year alongside: 

Drakenstein Municipality;  

Mossel Bay Municipality;  

Overstrand Municipality;  

Saldanha Bay Municipality; and 

Swartland Municipality.  

The signing of these MOUs is a critical step in phase one of the MER Initiative and follows a readiness evaluation to determine which municipalities were most equipped and met the conditions required to take advantage of the energy regulations to develop their own power generation projects and procure power from Independent Power Producers (IPPs).  

We will now be supporting and assisting these municipalities to ensure that municipal electricity networks are prepared to undertake pioneering renewable energy projects. The work will explore multiple pioneering renewable energy technologies and scales, cost options, scale of investment required, location issues, risks, municipal readiness needs, infrastructure needs, timelines to get capacity onto the grid, transaction and procurement mechanisms and regulatory issues.     

While we have been finalising the MOUs with these municipalities, we successfully concluded a request for information (RFI) calling on all potential private and public sector organisations, including Western Cape municipalities, to provide information on renewable energy projects which will assist in defining the potential pioneering projects that can be implemented in relevant candidate municipalities in the Western Cape.   

Additionally, we are also collaborating with the City of Cape Town, and welcome their recent announcement of an RFI for innovative funding and financing instrument solutions for their Renewable Energy Programme. This RFI is aimed at development banks and multilateral development funds for projects that the City will own and operate, located on City-owned land and buildings (typically within the City distribution grid), ranging in size from less than 1MW to 100MW per project with the potential to explore larger scale projects connected to Eskom’s network.  

We will continue to do everything we can to support municipalities and businesses to participate in the growing green energy sector and to become more energy resilient so that together we can create a more energy resilient future in the Western Cape.  

Issued by Francine Higham, Spokesperson for the Provincial Minister of Finance and Economic Opportunities (Responsible for the Provincial Treasury and the Department of Economic Development and Tourism), 22 July 2021