The City of Cape Town is committed to its vision of achieving energy security for a prosperous Cape Town, as outlined in the City’s Energy Strategy 2050. Today, 4 March 2025, the Mayoral Committee Member for Energy, Alderman Xanthea Limberg joined experts from countries across Africa and delivered an address at the 17th edition of the continent’s flagship Energy Indaba. Read more below:
The Africa Energy Indaba 2025 is the continent’s flagship event dedicated to the energy sector. The annual event plays an important role in connecting energy industry leaders, investors, civil society and government to drive the collective energy agenda of the African continent.
‘The Africa Energy Indaba allows all participants the opportunity to take stock of their achievements and learnings and as the City of Cape Town, a proud sponsor, we are excited to be joining the 17th edition under this year’s theme: Igniting the power revolution in Africa. The Indaba plays a crucial role in shaping conversations with energy partners and participants in our collective endeavour for energy security, development and economic growth.
‘Under the City’s Energy Mayoral Priority Programme, we are making exceptional progress towards our vision of a prosperous energy future, and we have spent a significant amount of our resources in modernising existing City services, improving our efficiency and setting ourselves up for building a capable future-fit energy utility.
‘We are proud to have successfully launched the online small-scale embedded generation (SSEG) application platform, which has not only made the application process easier for customers and installers alike, but has also led to applications being approved in record time. At the back of that successful launch, the City continues to process hundreds of applications with customers taking advantage of our ‘cash-for-power’ programme, where the City incentivises small scale generators for feeding their excess power into the grid.
‘The City is investing more than R4 billion on power infrastructure projects as part of our new budget from 2024 to 2027. We are investing in smart municipal buildings, energy efficient lighting projects and a number of other exciting projects. Construction of our first ground-mounted 7-10 MW solar photovoltaic (PV) plant in Atlantis remains on schedule and we expect it to be completed later this year. We also look to maximise the energy output of that plant with the addition of Battery Storage in the coming years. We view investment and partnerships within the energy sector as a catalyst for job creation, economic growth and development in our country. This is why through our planned investments in the years ahead, we estimate the creation of 130 000 jobs in the construction sector alone. Working with our partners, we have secured technical assistance from various international institutions, including grant funding to further our developmental agenda and improve our energy systems. We also look to maintain and expand our existing infrastructure fleet, including investment in the life-extension of our Steenbras Pumped-Hydro Storage facility, which serves a strategic purpose in our metro,’ said Alderman Limberg.
