Rolling out energy in southern Africa
An Environmental and Social Management
Framework (ESMF), developed by
SRK Consulting (South Africa) for the
Southern African Power Pool (SAPP), is
being rolled out among Southern African
Development Community (SADC)
countries to help accelerate priority
electricity projects.
The framework, commissioned by the SAPP in
2016, will facilitate the screening of key power
projects in line with lenders’ requirements — in
turn speeding up their implementation across
the subcontinent. A key obstacle to energy
access in southern Africa is the quality of the
existing power grids, which limit the ability
of new power generation to be harnessed
and distributed. The SAPP, which supplies
electricity to consumers in 16 SAPP utilities
and independent power producers (IPPs), is
busy improving these grids.
In 2009, the SAPP had identified several
priority projects that would improve
the region’s power grids, and by 2011,
many of these were found to require
extra developmental work to bring them
to bankability stage. In response, the
SAPP Coordination Centre — with
financial assistance from the World Bank’s
International Development Association —
set up a Project Advisory Unit (PAU) that
would accelerate the implementation of
these projects.
Among the implementation delays was a
lack of alignment between the compliance
requirements regarding environmental and
social management in the projects concerned.
One of the PAU’s first tasks, therefore, was to
commission technical specialists to help prepare
an ESMF, which would act as a reference
manual for the high-level environmental and
social screening of projects — to strengthen
the assessment, mitigation, and management
of risks and impacts. The ESMF would provide
a solution to facilitate both alignment and
compliance, thereby improving the pace of
implementation of projects that extend access
to affordable electricity. b
www.africanmining.co.za
Darryll Kilian, partner and principal environmental consultant at SRK Consulting (SA).
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