Ramaphosa: South Africa needs $90 trillion for just energy transition
President Cyril Ramaphosa says the country’s transition from fossil fuels to green energy will cost at least $90 trillion.
Ramaphosa addressed delegates at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP27) in Egypt.
World leaders are meeting in Sharm el-Sheikh amid calls to deepen emissions cuts and financially back developing countries already devastated by the effects of rising temperatures.
Ramaphosa said to achieve the goals of the Paris agreement, the continent will need a predictable, appropriate, and at-scale funding stream including technological support.
"The multilateral development banks need to be reformed to meet the needs of developing economies for sustainable development and climate resilience. At present, multilateral support is out of reach of the majority of the world’s population due to lending policies that are risk-averse and carry onerous costs and conditionalities."
"South Africa is hopeful that the commitments that were made to put effect to partnerships will be met, the amounts of money that are needed for South Africa to embark on this difficult journey are close to $90 trillion. The categorization of the funding needs to be well packaged so there are meaningful grants, concessional loans, and investments by a variety of institutions."
He emphasised that the transition must focus on the health, well-being, and food and water security of the most vulnerable.
"As a country, we are guided by a just transition framework and an investment plan that outlines the enormous scale and nature of investments needed to achieve our decarbonisation goals over the next five years.
"We are already scaling up investment in renewable energy and are on course to retire several of our ageing coal-fired power plants by the end of 2030."
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