The Evolution of Electrification in South Africa and Its Energy-Environmental Impact

South Africa is amongst the largest economies in Africa and is considered the most industrialised country in Africa. One of the primary reasons for industrialisation has been affordable electricity that was made available for manufacturing. South Africa accounted for 32% of the electricity generated in Africa in 2015, of which 92% was generated from coal. However electricity access and penetration within the local population was still lagging (at 86% in 2018) in spite of relatively large volumes of generation. In order to address the lopsided nature of electricity access, national policy prioritised access to electricity, which meant diversifying the nature of electricity from primarily thermal generation to include renewable sources. As part of the diversification, South Africa embarked on an ambitious renewable energy programme that involves private participation. As of 2017, South Africa generated 41% of wind energy, 56% of solar PV and 62% of solar thermal energy, for electricity generation on the African continent. The penetration and prevalence of renewable electricity generation is bound to increase considering the abundance of resource in the region. While renewable energy plants are environmentally less harmful due to limited emissions, limited information is available about the effects of utility scale renewable power plants in developing countries. This chapter aims to provide an investigation into the potential external (or unaccounted) effects of utility scale renewable plants particularly from a developing country perspective, where utility scale adoption is relatively new and where plant data is not readily available. The chapter aims to provide a comparison of external effects and external costs of renewable technologies with external effects and external costs of conventional thermal electricity generation within South Africa. Based on data considerations, a life-cycle based approach is employed, where possible. The investigation compares three power plants employing different technologies, namely coal power, on shore wind power and concentrated solar power (CSP). The results of the analysis indicate that environmental costs (USD 2.76 c/kWh) from coal fired electricity are significantly high by more than an order, whereas non-environmental impacts that include human health, have lesser variation depending on the technology. Wind power was observed to have the least impact and cost across totalled environmental and non-environmental impacts (USD 0.08 c/kWh). While investigation of the coal plant was limited to the generation stage, a full life cycle analysis was considered for other technologies. It was seen that the extraction and manufacturing stages of renewable technologies have a higher share of impacts whereas operations and maintenance had the least, which was prominent for the CSP plant, that had a total impact cost of USD 0.23 c/kWh. It is expected that, with more developing countries adopting utility scale renewable plants, such energy-environmental impact assessments within a developing country context will be useful in understanding localised impacts on the environment related to energy generation activities.