By: Dr Jonty Cogger - Senior Attorney at Centre for Environmental Rights

While South African government charts the country’s energy future behind closed doors, a pivotal decision with decades-long consequences has slipped almost entirely under the public radar.

On 29 May 2026, the deadline closed for companies to submit bids under South Africa's Gas Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme, Bid Window 1, known as GASIPPPP BW1. The programme aims to procure around 2 000 MW of new gas-fired power generation capacity. That is a massive amount of electricity that raises serious concerns about climate change and deepens the country’s dependence on fossil fuels. Yet most South Africans have never heard of this programme, let alone had a say in it.

Here is what you need to know, and why it matters to you.

How gas-to-power procurement works

The government, through the Department of Electricity and Energy, issues a document called a Request for Proposals, or RFP. This document sets out the rules of the game: what kind of power plants can be built, what technology must be used, how big they must be, how much power they must generate, and on what terms. Private companies, known as Independent Power Producers, or IPPs, then submit bids, competing to win contracts to build and operate these power stations. The winning bidders sign long-term Power Purchase Agreements, or PPAs, that lock in the terms for 20 years.

The electricity these plants produce is purchased by the national buyer and the cost is ultimately recovered from you, the consumer, through your electricity tariff. In other words, the public pays for this power.

Why this matters

These are not small decisions. The choices baked into the RFP about technology, fuel supply, pricing formulas, load commitments, and environmental requirements shape the country's energy future for decades. They determine how much you will pay for electricity. They determine how much pollution enters our air. They determine whether South Africa moves towards a cleaner energy future or locks itself into fossil fuel dependence at enormous cost.

The GASIPPPP requires 6 000 MW of gas-to-power capacity by 2030, with this first bid window procuring 2 000 MW. Each project will operate under a 20-year PPA, burning imported liquefied natural gas (LNG) to generate electricity. The fuel pricing is linked to volatile international gas markets; meaning that the cost of this electricity will fluctuate with global commodity prices and exchange rates. South African consumers will bear that cost.

The decisions made behind closed doors

Here is the troubling part. By the time bids closed on 29 May 2026, the critical decisions had already been made. The technology requirements, the pricing mechanisms, the environmental standards, the evaluation criteria were determined in the RFP and its amendments, issued through briefing notes to registered bidders. The public had no input into these decisions.

Worse, the public cannot even see the documents. To access the RFP, a prospective bidder must pay a non-refundable fee of R25 000 per project and register on the programme website. Effectively this acts as a paywall that bars ordinary citizens, community organisations, and civil society groups from reading the rules that will govern billions of rands of public expenditure.

Civil society has been shut out

In April 2026, the Centre for Environmental Rights (CER), acting on behalf of the groundWork Trust and the South Durban Community Environmental Alliance, filed a formal request under the Promotion of Access to Information Act (PAIA) seeking access to the RFP and related documents. They asked for the original RFP, all amendments, all clarification questions and answers between bidders and the Department, internal decision-making documents, and all information hosted on the restricted-access programme website.

On 22 May 2026 (just days before the bid submission deadline) the Department responded. The answer was a blanket refusal. Every single category of document was denied. The Department's reasoning was startling. It said it could not share the RFP because bidders had paid R25 000 for access, and releasing it would be "to the detriment of other parties that have complied with the Bid Submission Registration Fee." In effect, the Department treated a public procurement document as a commercial product, sold to paying customers.

This refusal came despite the fact that the Constitution, in section 32, guarantees everyone the right of access to information held by the state. It came despite the fact that section 217 of the Constitution requires all public procurement to be conducted in a system that is "fair, equitable, transparent, competitive and cost-effective." And it came despite a recent Supreme Court of Appeal judgment, handed down on 23 March 2026 in the case of Eskom v AfriForum, which emphatically reaffirmed that the "default position" is that public bodies must disclose requested information, and that general claims of confidentiality or commercial sensitivity are not enough to justify refusal.

A call to South Africans

The lights going off taught South Africans that energy is everyone's business. But keeping the lights on should not mean signing the country up for expensive, polluting power for the next 20 years without anyone outside a closed circle of bidders and officials having seen the terms.

The next time the Department of Electricity and Energy prepares a major energy procurement (and there will be further bid windows) South Africans must demand a seat at the table. Not after the bids have closed. Not after the contracts are signed. Before the rules are written.

Public money. Public impact. Public decisions. They should be made in public.