In 2000, coal accounted for 93.1% of South Africa’s electricity generation. By 2020, according to the Ember Electricity Data Explorer, that annual average had dropped to… 88.9%. So not by much, then. But after 20 years of nothing changing, suddenly a lot changed. At the end of 2025, coal’s share of the national energy mix was down to 81.4%. Renewables such as solar and wind, both zero in 2000, now contribute 13.1% and 5.82% respectively to the mix.

Those numbers are important in the context of South Africa’s – and Africa’s – just transition to low-carbon energy, because it’s easy to look at the reports and the comments coming out of multinational talk shops and think that South Africa is ‘addicted to’ (André de Rutyer, former Eskom CEO, speaking in 2024) or ‘obsessed with’ (Happy Khambule, then of Greenpeace Africa, speaking in 2023) coal.

Yes, the transition has been frustratingly, dangerously and, in some cases, unnecessarily slow. But it’s happening, and the pace is increasing. That is being driven by investment in renewable energy infrastructure, which is supported by financing and guided by government policy, which, in turn, is shaped by the Presidential Climate Commission (PCC).

As for the money, there’s plenty of it. In 2021, South Africa negotiated the Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP) with Germany, the UK, France, the US and the European Union, which collectively committed to providing the country with US$8.5 billion to help it shift from coal to renewable energy. (In 2025, the US pulled out, taking its US$1.5 billion with it.)

Since 2021, Germany alone has more than doubled its original financial commitment from EUR986 million to EUR2.68 billion. ‘I don’t think that anyone can stop the energy transition,’ Rainer Baake, Germany’s special envoy for the JETP, said recently. ‘Even though the US has now dropped out, there is more money available than there was originally.’

But the JETP has its critics. In a recent co-authored opinion piece, investigative researcher Jack Wolf, investigative journalist Oliver Stallwood and environmental journalist Sakhile Dube noted that ‘the groundbreaking multibillion-dollar scheme to decarbonise South Africa is now under threat of collapse, against a backdrop of a local economy addicted to coal, skyrocketing coal imports to the EU, claims of modern colonisation, concerns over transparency, and crumbling support’.

They pointed out that Europe’s decision to dramatically increase coal imports from South Africa, just months after announcing the JETP plan, ‘raises doubts about how serious they really are about helping the country move away from coal’.

The Climate Action Tracker is an independent scientific project that measures climate action against the Paris Agreement’s aim of ‘holding warming well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels, and pursuing efforts to limit warming to 1.5°C’. According to the project’s evaluation, Germany’s climate action is ‘insufficient’, garnering the country only a three-star rating, the same as South Africa. The US is rated ‘critically insufficient’ (one star), and not one of the measured countries is rated as ‘compatible’ with the Paris Agreement.

It is in that context – and with the understanding that nobody, anywhere, is on track – that South Africa’s slow progress towards a Just Energy Transition (JET) must be seen.

Action around the JET is guided by policy and governed by regulation. In South Africa, policy is shaped in consultation with the PCC. The PCC was established at the end of 2020, and by mid-2021, it had delivered its first set of recommendations, advocating for more ambitious emissions targets with lower transition risk.

A year later, government released its Just Transition Framework, outlining the actions it and its social partners would take to facilitate the transition to a low-carbon, climate-resilient economy and society. In 2023, the PCC supported the release of the Just Energy Transition Implementation Plan 2023–2027, which covers necessary reforms, investments and concrete projects for the energy transition, with a strong focus on social justice. As President Cyril Ramaphosa explained recently, the plan is ‘what we have been able to take to the international climate finance community and international forums as tangible proof of our resolve to walk the talk on climate action.

‘At COP30 in Brazil […] having a credible, tangible plan in place to support meeting our climate targets bolstered South Africa’s credibility, and lent weight to our commitment to equity, ambition and international co-operation,’ the president said.

South Africa has the commitments and intentions it needs for a JET – including a Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC), which outlines the country’s formal climate action plan under the Paris Agreement. But, as Lebogang Mulaisi, executive manager for research and policy at the PCC, points out: ‘What is missing in the process are binding tools and standards that can translate broad principles into practice.

‘South Africa has strong constitutional, legal and policy foundations for a just transition,’ she says. ‘The Just Transition Framework, the Climate Change Act, Labour Relations Act (LRA), skills policies, and sectoral master plans are all signals of intent. But intent alone does not protect workers facing retrenchment, communities confronting economic decline or new workers entering new sectors, with insecure new jobs.’

The ‘Just’ in Just Energy Transition is, ultimately, about the social risk. In its report, What a ‘Just Transition’ Means for Jobs in South Africa, published in 2019, PwC warned that many communities ‘depend on the coal value chain for their livelihoods, including coal mining, coal power generation and downstream beneficiation. South Africa’s coal sector directly employs about 113 000, making it the third-largest employer among domestic mining activities. Decommissioning coal mines in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in line with the NDC goals may put these jobs at risk’.

‘The scale of the risk is stark,’ warns Mulaisi. ‘One hundred thousand coal miners, tens of thousands of workers in energy-intensive industries, and over a million workers in petroleum-based transport could be affected by mitigation policies and global decarbonisation trends.’

Those risks, she added, are ‘geographically concentrated, complex and politically sensitive’. Komati was clear proof of that.

In 2022, after 60 years of service, South Africa’s Komati Power Station was decommissioned. In terms of the energy transition, that was good news: Komati’s nine generators were all coal-fired. But in terms of a ‘just’ transition, it was a disaster for Komati Village. The power station drove the town’s local economy. When it closed, hundreds of permanent staff, contractors and indirect workers lost their jobs. Residents moved out (many to the neighbouring towns of Middelburg or Bethal), shops closed, property prices plummeted and Komati Village became a ghost town.

‘The closure of Komati Power Station in 2022 became the symbolic turning point,’ Crispian Olver, deputy chairperson of the PCC’s first cohort, wrote in a subsequent working paper. ‘Presented as a model for “repurposing, repowering and reskilling”, Komati was meant to demonstrate that decarbonisation could be socially managed. Instead, it revealed the absence of a coherent transition plan and a divided government that was unable to respond effectively.’

Five years on from the establishment of the JETP, South Africa’s energy transition has many critics and, in Komati, a case study of what not to do. But the country also shows signs of an evolving energy mix, a growing renewable energy base and plenty of money earmarked for further infrastructure development.

It also has a president who talks the talk. ‘In this ever-uncertain environment, South Africa stands proud,’ Ramaphosa said in a recent speech. ‘We have not wavered on our commitments and havein fact scaled up our climate action.’

Pointing to ‘challenging times’ for global climate action, he said that nine years since the ‘signing of the Paris Agreement and with just five years to go before the world aims to meet the Sustainable Development Goals, countries of the world are way off track on climate goals. We are on a trajectory to exceed the 1.5°C warming limit. Despite this dire warning being sounded by experts for years, there has been noticeable climate action backsliding in a number of countries, including in the Global North’.

By its nature, the JET will take decades to happen. For those concerned about the effects of climate change, ‘decades’ is far too long. For those whose livelihoods are still tied to fossil fuels, ‘transition’ is a loaded term.

Climate risk has South Africa, as with many of its African peers, walking a social and environmental tightrope.

By Mark van Dijk
Images: Unsplash, Gallo/Getty Image