The World Bank ignited a firestorm of controversy after approving a $3.75bn loan for South Africa’s state-owned energy utility Eskom, intending to alleviate the energy-strapped country’s decades-long lack of generation capacity.
At the centre of the loan – and the controversy – is a $3.05bn earmark for the proposed 4.8-gigawatt Meduni coal plant north of Johannesburg. Another $260m has been set aside for a 100-megawatt (MW) wind farm in Sere and a 100MW concentrated solar project in Uppington – both expected to help kick-start South Africa’s nascent renewables industry.
The
