CEO Voice: October 2020
Dear Members,
We hosted the first ever virtual Windaba Conference this month, coinciding with a string of significant progress on the policy changes.
Just weeks after the Ministerial Determination for procurement of renewables and other technologies was gazetted, the Minister of Mineral Resources & Energy announced during the debate on Economic Recovery Plan, that the Bid Window 5 for the REIPPPP will be issued in December 2020. That is certainly something to look forward to. Windaba’s 10th year, was meant to be celebrated in grand style, however COVID-19 happened and forced us to rethink the format of this year’s conference. This led us to a decision to host the conference and exhibition on a virtual platform. despite this, we still consider the 10th instalment Windaba to have been quite a success hosting an event online, required the event to be mostly pre-record for technical reasons. Please review the conference stats below.
The programme was well aligned with this year’s theme “10 Years & Beyond – Wind energy leading two decades of energy transition” which means that we are reflecting on the industry growth over the past 10 years, where we saw procurement of 3.4 GW of wind power over 4 bidding rounds, and looking ahead to the 14.4 GW of wind to be built over the next decade, as outlined in the IRP. The conference programme focused on a broad range of topics from development & Construction, to technical and operations, to policy and markets and economic development.
As we look ahead towards what promises to be an unprecedented growth of the wind energy industry in South Africa, Windaba 2020 was a platform to reflect on our state of readiness, to deliver this capacity. Readiness in terms of availability of investment capital, skills availability, land availability, grid access, operational excellency, and investment in local supply chain development to support this growth phase. These are some of the topics that were tackled over two days of Windaba, in line with the Conference theme.
On behalf of SAWEA Board I would like to thank you as members of SAWEA for your continuous support of Windaba through either sponsorships, exhibitions or participating as delegates and as speakers, despite the current global health pandemic related challenges.. I trust you did had an opportunity to reconnect and make new business moves through our virtual B2B platform. The platform will remain available for the next 12 months for you to revisit the content (videos and presentations) and continue networking. We look forward to seeing you in person at Windaba 2021.
Kind regards,
Ntombifuthi Ntuli
CEO (SAWEA)
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