The South African Case: Developing And Implementing Incentives To Capture Solar Market Opportunities

The South African case study provides examples of some of the more extreme barriers encountered in a nascent renewable energy sector that was still under development. This chapter looks at the tensions between efforts to develop the huge potential of solar energy in South Africa, and the difficulty of changing the existing landscape of laws. It focuses on introducing financial incentives such the process of designing and implementing feed-in mechanisms and its related roles and representation of different stakeholders that are affected in this change process. Interview and survey feedback provide a picture of the barriers to cluster development, with a particular focus on the concentration of power and control in the hands of a parastatal organisation monopolising the generation, transmission and the distribution of electricity. The case also discusses barriers that reflect the unique historical and political context, as well as the more generic, cross-cutting barriers that are shared with other clusters.