South Africa's Climate Action Rating by the 'Climate Action Tracker' (Excerpt)

At the Climate Action Tracker site countries are evaluated according to the sufficiency of climate action.
Check out your country at the site.

(Excerpt- Pics by this blog)

"At 2 Dec 2019     Rating: Highly Insufficient"

"The South African government finally approved its Integrated

Resource Plan (IRP2019) in October 2019, confirming the trend change in power sector planning indicated in the draft for comment from August 2018. The plan reduces the role of coal compared to previous planning and increases the adoption of renewables and gas. Unlike earlier drafts, the IRP2019 proposes extending the operational lifetime of South Africa’s sole nuclear power plant by 20 years, up to 2044.

The final plan marks a major shift in energy policy, which is remarkable for a coal-dominated country like South Africa. It aims to decommission over 35 GW (of 42 GW currently operating) of coal-fired power capacity from state-owned coal and utility giant Eskom by 2050.

Coal in South Africa - Wikipedia

However, it would still see South Africa complete nearly 6 GW of costly coal capacity currently under construction and commission another 1.5 GW of new coal capacity by 2030. IRP2019 includes a detailed phase-out plan for coal-fired power plants, which, despite improvements to earlier plans, still shows that substantial amounts of coal capacity will run beyond the year 2050. For Paris-compatibility, coal must be phased out globally, at the very latest by 2040.

The plan also proposes a significant increase in renewables-based generation from wind and solar as well as gas-based generation capacity by 2030 (an additional 15.8 GW for wind, 7.4 GW for solar and 2.5 GW for gas by 2030), with no further new nuclear capacity being procured.

Implementing the IRP2019 will enable South Africa to achieve its 2030 NDC target. However, we rate South Africa’s NDC target as “Highly Insufficient” based on the upper end of the NDC range. In this context, South Africa should consider revising its target downward for 2030 to be resubmitted to the UNFCCC as part of the Paris Agreement’s ambition raising cycle of 2020.

To be in line with the Paris Agreement goals, South Africa would need to adopt more ambitious actions by 2050 beyond the IRP2019, such as even further increasing renewable energy capacity by 2030 and beyond, fully phasing out coal-fired power generation by latest 2040, and substantially limiting natural gas use.

Although South Africa is one of the few countries that has put forward absolute emissions targets in their NDC, we still rate this target “Highly Insufficient”.  ..........................

Go to Climate Action Tracker for more detail.

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...and in Australia: "While the federal government continues to repeatedly state that Australia is on track to meet its 2030 target “in a canter”, the Climate Action Tracker is not aware of any scientific basis, published by any analyst or government agency, that would support this. The OECD has warned the Australian Government that it will not achieve its target without intensified mitigation efforts. It describes current climate policy as a “piecemeal approach”." Climate Action Tracker

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