Eco Minute 13:30

BULLETIN 28 March 1:30 pm

Good afternoon, here is your Eco Minute:

# South Africa’s Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme, which was once a global model of success, is now faltering. This is according to the University of Cape Town’s Wikus Kruger, who says grid constraints, slow procurement cycles, and institutional challenges are stalling progress. He says Bid Window 6 collapsed due to grid constraints, while Bid Window 7 secured one-thousand-760-megawatts of solar photovoltaic, but bottlenecks prevented wind projects from being awarded. Kruger says urgent reforms are needed to fix the country’s renewables procurement.

# The City of Cape Town’s Water and Sanitation Directorate says it is busy appointing a new contractor to complete the upgrade at Fynbos Dam in Majik Forest, Bellville. The metro is investing about 5.5-million-rand into this upgrade project, which aims to assist water flow from the dam through the spillway. Mayoral committee member for Water and Sanitation, Zahid Badroodien, says work will resume in April and is expected to be completed by the end of June:

# And finally: The new JRC Advance report on Forest Fires in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, shows that in 2024 Ukraine had the worst fire season ever recorded in the European Union Forest Fires Information System. Nearly one-million hectares burnt in Ukraine. The report says the spatial distribution of the fires matches the line of the war front between Ukraine and Russia. Meanwhile, 2024 was the worst year for forest fires in Portugal since 2017, with 147-thousand hectares of land affected. 

Stay tuned for more news………….