Dion George said more needs to be done to implement the US9.3-billion R169-billion Just Energy Transition Partnership with some of the world's richest nations. The Democratic Alliance member who was appointed to the post on Sunday as part of the country's first coalition government since the 1990s, also wants to boost connecting renewable energy plants to the national grid.
"We've got the money and now we must spend it," George, 58, said in an interview on Friday. "That is what I am animated about."
George, who has served as the DA's shadow finance minister, takes over the environment post at a time when South Africa's partners in the so-called JETP - the US, the UK, Germany, France, the EU, the Netherlands and Denmark have expressed frustration about the pace of implementation.
Having secured the deal in 2021 in what has been billed as a prototype for similar pacts now being rolled out in Indonesia and Vietnam, South Africa has yet to close down any of the coal-fired power plants it pledged to and has only added 150MW of renewable energy to the grid.
The JETP has been mired in bickering in South Africa with the country's former and current energy ministers, both from the ANC, saying that the country was being used as a "guinea pig" by developed nations trying to promote a global green transition. Coal, which accounts for about 80 of South Africa's electricity generation, supports about 90 000 mining jobs and its extraction and use for power generation is a crucial economic activity in the Mpumalanga province.
