In this article, Etana Energy CEO Evan Rice writes that South Africa’s Industrial Development Strategy (IDS) rightly identifies affordable, reliable and decarbonised electricity as essential to industrial growth, but delivering on that ambition will require coordinated electricity reform pursued with urgency.
South Africa’s newly released IDS sets out an important ambition: to place industrial growth, competitiveness and resilience back at the centre of the country’s economic agenda. At the heart of that ambition is a familiar but unavoidable requirement - affordable, reliable and increasingly decarbonised electricity.
That is why the IDS’s emphasis on energy as a core industrial enabler is so important. If South Africa is serious about growing energy-intensive sectors, attracting investment and supporting globally competitive industry, it needs an electricity system that can deliver on cost, security of supply and decarbonisation at the same time.
Encouragingly, one part of the reform agenda has already delivered tangible results. Since lifting the 1MW cap on private power capacity that could be built without obtaining a generation licence in 2022, more than R150bn of private capital has been invested in 6.5GW of new large-scale renewable energy capacity for private offtake via wheeling. Initially this took the form of bilateral transactions between IPPs and large power users. Since 2025, most new capacity (nearly 3.5GW) has been facilitated by licensed electricity traders, who have expanded access for clean power, competitive pricing and greater certainty over future energy costs to a broader range of companies. Traders aggregate both supply and demand, helping to manage settlement risk and allowing for more flexible contracting.
