Accelerating the Market Penetration of Renewable Energy ...

Renewable energy has the potential to contribute to a number of key challenges in South Africa, in particular in providing cost effective modern energy services in rural areas and facilitating job creation. The White paper on the Energy Policy indicates clearly that in the past, South Africa has neglected the development of renewable energy applications. To address this problem, the Government intends to formulate policy specifically oriented towards renewable energy. The policy is meant to: 1) ensure that economically feasible technologies are implemented; 2) ensure that an equitable level of national resources is invested in renewable technologies; and 3) to address the constraints on the development of the renewable industry. The Member States of the EU on the other hand have acquired considerable knowledge and experience on the issue of how government and market initiatives can be used to overcome financial and institutional barriers in renewable energy development. These European initiatives can broadly be divided into the following three categories: 1) R&D efforts aimed at long term cost reduction of renewable energy technologies; 2) Measures to stimulate the market penetration of renewable energy technologies; 3) Improvements of the institutional and regulatory framework