CEO Voice: February 2021

CEO Voice: February 2021

Dear Members,

#10Yrs – Celebrating a Decade of Wind Power in South Africa.

Having launched this theme at #Windaba2020, ‘10 years and Beyond: Wind Energy Leading two Decades of Energy Transition’, we will commemorate this milestone with our PR campaign, with the hashtag ‘#10Yrs’ addressing topical issues, and highlighting the achievement of the sector in areas such as Socio-economic Development, Environmental Impact, Youth Empowerment (employment, scholarships, professional development, etc), local value chain development as well as Gender Diversity.

Our Gender Diversity WG has been successfully launched, having drawn an abundant uptake, for which I would like to thank all members who have supported and participated in our inaugural meeting. We have set ourselves objectives to focus on the following programmes:

• Coaching and Mentorship – we will be launching a mentorship programme in partnership with WE Connect
• Women in Wind – Leadership Acceleration Programme – in partnership with Business Schools and Industry
• Gender Diversity Performance Reporting
• Business Opportunities for Women
• Dialogues and Events
• Recognition – Windaba Awards

I’m really hoping that our strategic focus on Gender Diversity this year will derive a lot of benefit for the sector and set a foundation for future programmes and address transformation challenges that the sector may be dealing with.

Another exciting development is that we have now officially launched the Legal Working Group, which will serve as a collaboration platform for legal professionals to discuss common challenges (be it legal or legislative) with the view of unblocking these sector wide challenges from a legal perspective.

And last, but not least, I’d like to reflect on President Ramaphosa’s State of the Nation Address earlier this month. It was encouraging to hear that the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy will soon be announcing the successful bids for 2 000 megawatts of emergency power, and the fact that two renewable energy bidding windows will be announced in 2021 starting with 2 600 MW from wind and solar energy as part of Bid Window 5, expected in the coming weeks. Although we anticipated BW5 in Q1 2021, it is great to know that it’s one of the immediate priorities of government.

Kind Regards,
Ntombifuthi Ntuli
CEO (SAWEA)