South Africa’s emergency power process nears another deadline

South Africa has made faltering progress toward implementing plans announced more than two years ago to procure additional power needed to swiftly address crippling energy shortages. The Department of Mineral Resources and Energy first issued a request for information from potential electricity suppliers in December 2019. A year later it listed 28 interested bidders, and in 2021 it chose the winners of contracts to generate about 2,000 megawatts of capacity under its so-called Risk Mitigation Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme.