World Bank Supports South Africa’s drive for scaling up energy efficiency market development.
Recognizing the power sector as strategically vital to South Africa’s economic growth and environmental sustainability, the World Bank has partnered with the South African National Energy Development Institute (SANEDI) and the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy (DMRE) to drive opportunities in the large-scale demand-side energy efficiency market.
This is being done through a request for consultant’s Expression of Interest (EoI) to assist with an “Energy Service Company (ESCO) Market Development in South Africa” technical assistance, which was launched by the World Bank on 30 June 2021. “The appointed consultant will build upon international best practices to identify feasible paths for transformative development of the ESCO industry in South Africa that could effectively contribute to untapping the large-scale demand-side energy efficiency market,” explains Barry Bredenkamp, General Manager, Energy Efficiency & Corporate Communications at SANEDI. Energy service companies, or ESCOs, are commercial companies that support the financing and implementation of energy efficiency projects. A typical full-service ESCO is a business that provides a broad range of clean energy solutions, including the design and implementation of energy savings projects, retrofitting, energy conservation, energy infrastructure outsourcing, power generation and energy supply, and risk management.
The appointed party will be tasked with assessing the South African ESCO market’s potential and barriers across the various energy efficiency market ecosystems, covering different endues segments (public, commercial, industry, and buildings sectors); identifying feasible solutions and tools based on global best practices and experiences with different types of ESCO solutions (public and private); and the development of building blocks like energy savings performance contracts and energy savings measurement and verification protocols that will contribute to scaling up ESCO-implemented Energy Efficiency investments in the country. The potential business models, feasible institutional and financing mechanisms and skills gaps associated with the public and private sector ESCO-implemented delivery approaches will also be analyzed and developed
Scaling-up Energy Efficiency interventions in South Africa is considered one of the most promising solutions to ensure energy security in the country and achieve rapid, ambitious and cost-effective emission reductions