Exclusive interview with Mandy Rambharos, Vice President for Global Climate Cooperation at the Environmental Defense Fund. Before that, Rambharos spent 20 years at South Africa’s Eskom Holdings, including as GM for Just Energy Transition. Rambharos is also a former negotiator for South Africa at the United Nations climate talks. At the recent Enlit Africa, she was a panellist in a discussion on “Can’t deliver, can’t receive: The generation/transmission mismatch.”
How are you participating in Enlit Africa this year?
At Enlit this year, I’m speaking on a few panels on the just energy transition and carbon markets and carbon pricing. Those are my two areas of expertise and the two areas that I currently work on at the Environmental Defense Fund.
What is your vision for the just energy transition specifically focusing on the African continent?
The African continent has so much potential to literally be the powerhouse of the world in terms of clean energy. We have every resource you can think of from a clean energy perspective, but we also have a lot of socio-economic growth and development we still need to do. So, in an ideal world, from a just energy transition perspective, is to be able to capitalise on all of the energy resources we have and at the same time enabling socio-economic growth for the people of Africa.
What are the main challenges in your view?
One of the biggest challenges is finance, and how to enable financing into the African continent. A lot of investors are very keen on investing in African countries but the biggest challenge and hurdle they face is regulation and lack of coherent policy that invites investment into African countries. So we absolutely need to manage that risk and ensure that we have policy coherence and policy that we are committed to as Africans in order to get investment into our countries.
During the panel discussion on “Can’t deliver, can’t receive: The generation/transmission mismatch,” you stated that a lot of investors are worried about political risk whenever there is an election. They are worried that plans that have been set before or not followed through.
Absolutely. So we have a lot of good policy in a lot of African countries. South Africa is a great example of good regulation, good policy, but implementation struggles. We have incoherent messages coming through from different government departments in terms of commitment to policies to, for example, shut down coal, build more renewables. So, we absolutely need commitment to the policy. It’s no good just putting a policy in place. You actually have to implement that and you have to have to be committed to implement that, regardless of who is in charge and who is in government.
Tell us some of the success stories and case studies that you working on in your current position.
There are a number of case studies. Unfortunately, I don’t have examples on the African continent because we’re doing a lot of work in, for example, India, China and Puerto Rico. For example, in Puerto Rico, there’s been an absolute change in terms of energy access due to their commitment to building renewables, building solar plants. So that’s been an excellent example of how regulation and policy and just political will can change energy access for people in the country.
Another good example is Vietnam: the country was looking to roll out rooftop solar PV, and they had to change their industrial policy to enable that. They did that and within a year they put up a phenomenal amount of rooftop solar.
So, there are good examples around the world that we can we can absolutely learn from. I think a good example from South Africa in the past was the renewable energy IPP programme, which was worldwide regarded as successful and unfortunately stopped due to again, incoherent policy. So, there really are good examples from our own countries that we can build on and replicate.
How important is energy as a sector in the green economy movement for the future?
It’s crucial. The energy sector is fundamental to the green energy movement. It underpins every other sector. If you can have a clean energy system, you take care of the emissions related to electricity for every other sector: for agriculture to become cleaner, for industry to become cleaner, and mining. Having a clean energy sector absolutely enables all of that to happen much quicker.
What inspires you about your work and making a difference to people?
I think when you do a job that is purpose driven, where you want to see growth, people growing from a social perspective and economic perspective, but to also couple that we’re doing it in a clean way, where you’re not having a negative impact on the environment. When you can think about generations to come, having clean air, having economic growth. I think being able to do work that enables that is what inspires me.
Thank you for your time.
Thank you.
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