She is also a longstanding advisory board member of Africa’s Green Economy Summit.
Across the group, we produce market intelligence reports. GreenCape has a full representation across the green sectors, supporting renewable energy, both at utility scale and embedded generation, electric mobility, water, sustainable agriculture, circular economy and waste management, as well as green finance.
We’ve got a membership of over 3,000 members who we speak to on a regular basis, and because of that, we gain deep sector knowledge. This ultimately leads us to be able to build market intelligence reports, the latest of which was just published last month in March 2025.
They are available online to anybody looking to find out more about the different sectors within the green economy here in South Africa. So I would definitely point people towards those market intelligence reports.
It’s one of the ways that GreenCape is trying to address any information asymmetry that exists in the market. The more that people are up to skill and know what’s out there, and what are the opportunities, the barriers, the gaps; the more investment flow and job creation into South Africa there is going to be.
Well, certainly that we are anticipating by the year 2030 that there will be a full 32 gigawatts of renewable energy online.
I think some of the work that GreenCape has been involved in, specifically the South African Renewable Energy Master Plan (SAREM), which was actually put through Parliament in late March, and has been passed by the South African Cabinet.
That particular piece of work now really enables a lot of the industrialisation of the full scale and value chain of renewable energy.
Further to that, we’ve been involved in a lot of work around facilitating the wheeling opportunity here in South Africa, which obviously opens up a lot of private development with regards to renewable energy.
So some really great opportunities that are coming online that we’re seeing. And of course, the embedded generation opportunity that’s happening, not just around energy security, but also an opportunity for energy price security that we’re seeing.
We’re also seeing exciting opportunities in water. We’ve seen a massive increase in investments here in South Africa with regards to water and adaptation, so, hopefully seeing still further numbers climbing with regards to investments in that particular sector.
There’s definitely a little bit of help needed within the sustainable agriculture sector.
I think that also what we’re seeing within the waste management sector, is that landfill costs are going up. It’s extremely expensive to get rid of our waste now. What we’re seeing is then an opportunity of how do we actually handle that waste in a responsible manner.
This is particularly evidenced here in Cape Town, where there’s a ban on landfills for organic waste. It’s an opportunity for us to find other ways to actually manage that waste.
We’re seeing opportunities such as black soldier flies, which has become a kind of buzz word, but is really a great opportunity here in South Africa to manage and deal with our organic waste, alongside a number of different opportunities that exist within that space.
Actually really encouraging. We actually see the reverse of that here in South Africa. For the most part, we are seeing that domestically South Africa is actually financing its own climate finance transition and climate finance work.
We’ve got a 91% domestic representation with 9% international climate finance flows coming into the country. And then we’re also seeing a huge representation from commercial and financial institutions that are representing at about 86%. So an interesting converse to Africa that’s happening with regards to that finance mix.
What it does translate to is that when we have a fairly strong representation from a debt perspective (so not necessarily a private equity perspective but of debt); where we’ve got 75% of climate finance flows utilizing debt as an instrument, at a cost of debt between 10 and 12%, is that climate finance here in South Africa is pretty expensive.
Something that we really need to see is a little bit more innovation in the blended finance space, and how we can start adding these mechanisms and getting more creative on how we actually finance our climate finance here in South Africa. For example, an opportunity around guarantees and scaling blended finance that we hear a lot in the market. So a lot of opportunities there.
It’s incredible, having been part of it right from the start, it’s absolutely brilliant to see how it’s starting to scale, starting to see the momentum and, more importantly, who’s in the room now.
I think at any event, it’s really about who are you pulling into the room and seeing it from that side. So I’m incredibly encouraged to see AGES becoming its own landmark event within the climate finance and green finance space and super encouraged to see who’s actually in the room. And that’s where it’s critical, because those are where the conversations actually happen.
I think at any event, it’s really about who are you pulling into the room and seeing it from that side. So I’m incredibly encouraged to see AGES becoming its own landmark event within the climate finance and green finance space and super encouraged to see who’s actually in the room. And that’s where it’s critical, because those are where the conversations actually happen.
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