South Africa's minister of water and environmental affairs, Edna Molewa, reiterated the country's commitment to reduce emissions by 34 percent below usual business levels by 2020 and 42 percent by 2025. Molewa was speaking at the Cop 16 meeting held at Cancun in November last year. "This is immensely challenging given our historical dependence on a coal based energy supply. We recognise that our development and poverty eradication priorities cannot be separated from transitioning to a green and climate resilient economy.
We are actively working towards cleaner and renewable energy sources, energy efficiency, and building adaptation into our sustainable development and poverty eradication priorities," she said. She added that between now and 2012, several alternative technologies such Concentrated Solar Power in the Northern Cape looking at achieving a capacity of 1,100 MW, scaling up to 5,000 MW by 2020 are in the pipeline.
"There are several other potential areas in wind energy with potential of scaling up to 10,000 MW. In transportation we are looking at innovative transport systems in rail, and up-scaling the South African electric vehicle, the Joule." " However, all these require technological and financial support in the order of billions of dollars."
