Carbon and climate change advisory firm Promethium Carbon launched its Independent Power Producers (IPPs) Guideline last month to assist prospective IPPs in navigating through the procedures required to license new electricity generation facilities in Southern Africa.
The guideline outlines the background policies and regulatory processes for IPPs to obtain generation licences within Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
The guide forms part of a project funded by the British High Commission and was informed by interviews with relevant government departments, energy regulators, industry associations, IPPs, available legislation and published literature.
Deputy British High Commissioner Peter Boxer highlights that the UK is proud to be an advocate for renewable energy in Africa.
Promethium Carbon director Robbie Louw says: “The guideline is complemented by the ‘Electricity Market Reform in Southern Africa’ report, which provides a bigger picture for the emerging opportunities for IPPs”.
The report was launched alongside Promethium’s IPPs guideline. It reviews the development of international energy markets and identifies the structures and mechanisms developed countries have employed to transform the electricity markets over the past two decades.
He adds that, during the devel-opment of the report and guidelines, it was important to consider the appropriateness of applying the international IPP trend to the Southern Africa context. This was then followed by deter-mining and proposing the required steps, which would help reform the region’s markets within the existing regulatory frameworks.
“Case studies, including the wheeling of electricity, own generation, embedded generation and market aggregators, [were] used to demonstrate that the essential elements needed for market transformation are in place within the current frameworks in the region,” Louw asserts.