South Africa's State-owned Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) was seeking to initiate a far-reaching study into the appropriate funding model for energy-efficiency and renewable-energy investments in South Africa.

The initiative is supported by French and German development agencies, Agence Française de Développement (AFD) and Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau (KfW), which would consider making available dedicated credit lines to domestic financial institutions.

The IDC has published a request for expressions of interest for a study that would be split into four modules including:

• A study of the current "sustainable energy landscape and policy framework";
• An assessment of potential demand for such investments by the private sector in targeted investment segments;
• The structuring of the credit line; and
• The structuring of bundled carbon-credit transactions.

The tender has been issued as the IDC seeks to intensify its own involvement in the energy sector more generally, including the renewable-energy milieu.

In fact, the IDC has told Engineering News Online recently that it is receiving ongoing representations from other potential independent power producers (IPPs), most of which were either bidding to supply South Africa through Eskom's ‘Multisite Baseload IPP' tender, or under the utility's so-called ‘Medium-Term Power Purchase Programme'.

But, it has particular interest in renewable-energy IPPs, especially since the approval of a renewable-energy feed-in tariff, or Refit, earlier in the year.

The IDC has been approached to: participate in a 500-MW wind farm, in the Western Cape; is considering a R1-billion participation in Eskom's R6-billion concentrating solar power project, which could be built in the Northern Cape; is engaged with a smaller-scale solar-energy pilot project; has approved R74-million for a 7,5-MW wood biomass IPP in George, in the Western Cape; and has set aside R5-million for a project to capture and flare methane gas at one of the largest pig farms in Mpumalanga province.

The project with AFD and KfW is designed primarily to create a funding mechanism that will support the lowering of the country's carbon footprint, including through co-financed initiatives, the creation of incentives to support investments and the development of a technical support package.

It will also assess the role of funding institution in dealing with the constraints to accessing carbon-credit transactions.

The IDC has set a deadline of July 27 for receiving responses to the tender.