Article Politics and Space

Environment and Planning C: Politics

and Space
Tensions in the transition: 2019, Vol. 37(1) 177–196
! The Author(s) 2018
The politics of electricity
Article reuse guidelines:
distribution in South Africa sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/2399654418778590
journals.sagepub.com/home/epc

Lucy Baker
University of Sussex, UK

Jon Phillips
King’s College London, UK

Abstract
This paper argues that the distribution of electricity represents an important yet neglected aspect
of the politics of energy transitions. In recent years, South Africa’s electricity sector has seen the
introduction of new actors and technologies, including the ‘prosumer’ (producer–consumer) of
electricity and small-scale embedded generation from roof-top solar photovoltaics. We analyse
these recent developments in historical context and consider implications for contemporary
planning, regulation and ownership of electricity. We find that the reconfiguration of electricity
distribution faces significant political and economic challenges that are rooted in the country’s
socio-economic and racial inequalities and its heavy dependence on coal-fired power. First
small-scale embedded generation offers potential opportunities for affordable, decentralised,
low-carbon energy, yet disruption to the coal-powered electric grid and the monopoly of
South Africa’s electricity utility has been minimal to date. Second, small-scale embedded gener-
ation creates tensions between equitable and low-carbon energy transitions and threatens critical
revenue from the country’s wealthy consumers that cross-subsidises electricity services for the
poor and other municipal public services. Third, the South African experience queries common
assumptions about the democratic potential of decentralised governance. Fourth, South Africa
provides insights of global significance into how political institutions have responded to social and
technological drivers of change, in a context where planning and regulation have followed rather
than led infrastructural developments. While energy policy remains unresponsive or resistant
to social and technological change, there remain significant political, economic, technical and
regulatory challenges to a just and inclusive energy transition.

Corresponding author:
Lucy Baker, Science Policy Research Unit, University of Sussex, Brighton BN1 9RH, UK.
Email: [email protected]
178 Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space 37(1)

Keywords
Distributed generation, electricity, small-scale embedded generation, solar photovoltaics,
South Africa

Introduction
In recent years, the transformation of the electricity network has become recognised as
critical for the low carbon transition. The conventional electricity utility business model
based on a centralised system of transmission, generation and distribution is subject to
significant challenge from disruptive technologies and the rise of the ‘prosumer’ (produc-
er–consumer) of electricity (Sioshansi, 2014). The term disruptive technologies is used here
to refer to innovations which if scaled up would disrupt the basic network architecture of the
electricity system (Verbong and Geels, 2010). Such disruption includes the rapid deployment
of renewable energy generation, including from wind and solar across the globe; the emer-
gence of distributed electricity generation; smart and flexible power systems such as energy
demand response and storage and rapid advances in information and communication tech-
nologies (Skillings and Lafford, 2016).
These innovations are proving all the more disruptive as the costs of renewable energy
technologies decline and the costs of maintaining a centralised grid increase (Lacey, 2014,
Price Waterhouse Coopers [PwC], 2016). Furthermore, there is growing evidence that the
costs of integrating renewable energy into the grid are much lower than currently assumed if
appropriate and targeted investment in grid flexibility takes place (Skillings and Lafford,
2016). The implications that this has for the regulation, ownership and structure of elec-
tricity systems are significant, which as the International Energy Agency (IEA) argues, needs
to look ‘beyond the usual and simplistic alternative between “free markets” and “utility
regulation” or “decentralised decisions” versus “central planning”. . .’ (IEA, 2016: 18).
We consider how these global shifts in electricity supply and demand are playing out in
South Africa, where the electricity system to date has been controlled by a state-owned,
largely coal dependent monopoly utility which owns the transmission grid, is responsible for
95 per cent of generation and 60 per cent of distribution. Municipalities meanwhile are
responsible for the other 40 per cent. South Africa’s electricity system has been historically
determined by the country’s abundant coal supplies, and complex interactions between its
social, political and economic institutions, networked infrastructures and technological
capabilities (Baker, 2016). Despite the recent introduction of a small but significant
programme for renewable energy from utility-scale, grid-connected independent power pro-
ducers (IPPs), coal-fired power plants account for approximately 90 per cent of electricity
produced. While grid connection rates have increased from only a third of the population to
approximately 87 per cent since the end of apartheid in 1994, many low-income households
cannot afford to use the grid to which they are connected and 3.2 million households,
particularly those in informal settlements, lack access to electricity and other basic services.
Forty-three per cent of South Africans are considered ‘energy poor’, meaning that they do
not have ‘access to adequate, reliable, safe and environmentally benign energy’ (Sustainable
Energy Africa (SEA), 2015).
Within this complex milieu, in recent years, South Africa has witnessed the rapid intro-
duction of rooftop and ground-mounted solar PV by commercial, industrial and high-
income residential households.1 The many thousands of grid-tied distributed installations,
each less than 1 MW and typically much smaller, are collectively termed small-scale
Baker and Phillips 179

embedded generation (SSEG) or distributed generation.2 Despite the absence of an appro-

priate national legal and regulatory framework thus far, SSEG has been installed by com-
merce, industry and wealthy households, primarily in response to recurrent crises in
electricity supply, rising tariffs, and rapidly declining prices for solar PV technology.
While the level of electricity generated by SSEG in South Africa is minimal in comparison
to overall national capacity, it still offers a window of opportunity to reconfigure systems of
electricity generation, distribution and transmission. In this paper, we consider whether this
is done in a way that prioritises a ‘just’ and ‘inclusive’ transition (Swilling et al., 2016) and
explore the challenges that currently prevent this.
In this paper, we demonstrate the significance of electricity distribution to energy tran-
sitions. First, we provide an exploration of the socio-economic and technical challenges that
are arising from the interaction between the politics of electricity in South Africa and the
introduction of SSEG as a disruptive technology. Second, we examine the potential socio-
economic impacts of rooftop solar PV, and the extent to which new opportunities may either
redress or reproduce the injustices of the current electricity system. We find that while
disruptive technologies offer potential opportunities to develop infrastructure that is more
responsive to environmental and social imperatives, they also threaten critical revenue from
South Africa’s wealthy consumers that cross-subsidises electricity services for the poor and
other essential municipal public services. This has been compounded by the fact that energy
policy and planning to date has been unresponsive or resistant to social and technological
change. Moreover, there are currently no safeguards to ensure that generation of renewable
energy by and for the wealthy does not take place at the cost of service provision to the
poor. There are therefore significant political, economic, technical and regulatory challenges
to any potential reconfiguration of the country’s electricity infrastructure, and to a just and
inclusive energy transition.
In addition to the significant literature on national level dynamics and policy making in
South Africa’s electricity sector (e.g. Baker et al., 2015; Bekker et al., 2008; Eberhard et al.,
2014), this paper contributes to the more recent academic studies on the country’s distribu-
tion system. These studies include the challenges involved in the implementation of SSEG
from rooftop solar PV and growing understandings of politics of electricity distribution in
South Africa, as a contested space (Janisch et al., 2012; Korsten, 2015; Mayr et al., 2015;
Tshehla, 2014; Walwyn, 2015). The paper draws on an extensive desk-based analysis of
policy and regulatory documents produced by institutions involved in South Africa’s elec-
tricity governance, including national and municipal government, the state-owned utility
Eskom and the national energy regulator, as well as reports and publications by advocacy
organisations, think tanks, industry and relevant media, including Business Day,
Engineering News and ESI Africa. Analysis of secondary sources is combined with insights
drawn from the authors’ participation in electricity policy consultations and debates in
South Africa, supplemented by 18 semi-structured interviews carried out with members of
South African industry, non-governmental organisations and local government in
November 2016 and July 2017.
The structure of this paper is as follows. The next section outlines our perspective on the
politics and political economy of electricity, including key literatures and theoretical con-
cepts that contribute to emerging thinking on disruptive technologies. The ‘Electricity access
in South Africa’ section examines the nature of energy access in South Africa, raising critical
considerations for the socio-economic impacts of disruptive technologies. The ‘Eskom in
context: A monopoly in crisis’ section focuses on national-level dynamics and structures
including the monopoly utility Eskom and key policies and regulations which have deter-
mined the structure of the country’s electricity governance. This is followed in ‘The politics
180 Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space 37(1)

of distribution’ section by an examination of the politics of the distribution network, includ-

ing the role of municipalities and tensions between municipalities and Eskom. The ‘Tensions
in the transition’ section analyses key tensions with regards to the implementation of SSEG,
including the absence of a regulatory framework. Conclusions are given in the final section.

A political economy of electricity: From monopoly to disruption

We use the South African case study to advance understandings of how politics matters for
energy transitions (Bouzarovski et al., 2017; Lockwood et al., 2017) and to consider ques-
tions of power, politics, equity and socio-economic welfare that remain under represented in
research on energy transitions to date. Following evolving concepts of the political economy
of electricity (Baker and Burton, 2018), we conceive of the electricity sector as a site of
‘struggle’ over the governance and ownership of generation, distribution and transmission;
and the allocation and access to electricity services (Gentle, 2009; MacDonald, 2016). The
concept of struggle further relates to the way in which disruptive technologies will reconfig-
ure electricity as a networked infrastructure and how interactions between technological
change and established configurations of political, social and economic power should be
accounted for.
As a large technological system, electricity is ‘site-specific’ – embedded in broader polit-
ical, economic and social forces (Hughes, 1983) – and as a natural monopoly, lends itself
towards economies of scale. For this reason, electricity is not easily governed and has proven
one of the hardest network industries to reform (Victor and Heller, 2007). As South Africa’s
case demonstrates, purposeful efforts to adapt electricity infrastructures can be frustrated
and/or manipulated by path-dependency, vested interests and the uncertainties of adopting
new technologies.
As Eberhard and Godinho (2017) argue, the literature on electricity sector reform has
often underplayed the social, political and economic complexities of electricity in favour of a
more techno-economic and managerial approach, despite the growing acknowledgement of
contextual difference, and national and sub-national factors. Such differences include how
the electricity system is shaped by and interacts with differentiated patterns of domestic and
industrial consumption; socio-economic inequality and uneven access to services; processes
of spatial development; land tenure regulations; municipal level governance and the strong
influencing role that vested interests can have in electricity policy and planning.
The long-standing debate on the optimal model of electricity sector reform, particularly
in low- and middle-income countries, has generally been reduced to a polarisation between
liberalisation and free markets at one end, and state ownership and central planning at the
other. Consequently, the literature on electricity sector reform (Sen, 2014; Victor and Heller,
2007) has largely focused on the unbundling of utilities and the ‘standard model’ of power
sector liberalisation (Gratwick and Eberhard, 2008), first promoted by the World Bank and
related consultants in the 1980s and 1990s as part of loan conditionalities. The rationale
behind this model was that public ownership resulted in poor technical and financial per-
formance and was unable to meet the high levels of investment required by the electricity
sector. In the interests of efficiency and cost effectiveness, proponents of this model advo-
cated a move away from a state-owned utility to the unbundling of the utility into separate
transmission, generation and distribution companies, including a significant role for whole-
sale markets and retail competition (Sen, 2014). However, in light of repeated failings of the
standard model in low- and middle-income countries, its promotion has been in demise for
some time.
Baker and Phillips 181

The underlying logic of electricity sector liberalisation has been subject to further chal-
lenge from rapid technological change and an increase in renewable energy generation,
including embedded generation (Sen, 2014). More diverse models are now emerging, includ-
ing various forms of ‘hybrid power markets’ in which vertically-integrated, state-owned
utilities remain the dominant player and the single buyer of electricity, but IPPs contribute
a certain amount of generation capacity. A new challenge for the literature on power sector
reform therefore is to engage with the recent evolution of disruptive technologies which will
see new generation sources connecting directly to the distribution network rather than the
transmission network (Verbong and Geels, 2010), and the impact that this will have on the
nature of electricity regulation, given the more decentralised infrastructural configurations
that this will require.
With some exceptions (e.g. IEA, 2016; Scott and Seth, 2013), much of the literature on
the technical and regulatory implications of the emergence of disruptive technologies has
been focussed on high-income contexts, such as the US, the European Union (EU)
(Costello, 2015; Eid et al., 2014) and China (PwC, 2016). Similarly, recent academic liter-
ature on the reconfiguration of electricity distribution networks, a subset of the vast socio-
technical transitions literature, has paid more attention to high-income countries. Countries
such as Germany and the UK for instance, have witnessed the ‘re-regulation’ of liberalised
electricity markets (Becker et al., 2015; Lehtonen and Nye, 2009) through the introduction
of renewable energy feed-in tariffs and low-carbon obligations. Yet, as Bolton and Foxon
(2015: 538) argue, there is relatively ‘little understanding of the social and institutional
dimension’ of the distribution network and ‘appropriate governance strategies for their
transformation’. In parallel to the technology, this literature is still evolving, and so by
looking at the case of South Africa we add geographical nuance to a fast-evolving terrain.
For some government and civil society activists in the global North, guiding low-carbon
energy transitions has meant bringing ownership of the distribution network back under
some form of state, public or cooperative control (Rocholl and Bolton, 2016). This is often
accompanied by an implicit assumption that small-scale and distributed generation will
automatically result in social and democratic co-benefits e.g. Mouat (2016) and Dodge
(2013). However, while South Africa’s electricity sector features the level of public owner-
ship envisioned by some activists who have sought to ‘re-municipalise’ the electric grid in the
privatised energy sectors of Europe (Moss et al., 2015), its case clearly demonstrates that
public ownership does not necessarily imply democratic participation or equality of access.
In this sense, debates on ownership of networked infrastructure typically go beyond the legal
and material to include issues of distributional justice, environmental sustainability, demo-
cratic participation and procedural parity (Cumbers, 2012).
Finally, this research contributes to emerging debates over what the role, nature and
ownership of ‘the utility’ will and should be (MacDonald, 2016) and how the electricity
sector in the low-carbon transition could be regulated (Costello and Hemphill, 2014), not
least because of the significant role anticipated of it in achieving decarbonisation targets
(IEA, 2016; Sen, 2014). Such thinking includes contemporary concepts of the ‘utility death
spiral’ (Costello and Hemphill, 2014; Janisch et al., 2012), a situation which arises when a
utility increases its electricity tariffs, thereby creating incentives for retail customers to invest
in self-generation for some or all of their electricity supply. This in turn hits utility revenues,
creates pressure for further tariff increases and a cycle of grid defection and rising tariffs
ensues. Such a spiral results in a decline in the utility’s sales and consequently its ability to
generate sufficient revenue to cover its fixed costs. In the case of South Africa, both Eskom
and municipalities remain vulnerable to declining revenues and as such both have resisted
the introduction of SSEG (Korsten, 2015). As we explore, the politics of embedded
182 Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space 37(1)

generation often plays out in technical debates over the determination of tariffs and the
value that solar PV provides to the grid, to utilities, to different electricity users and to
society at large.
With this in mind, we now consider the evolution of electricity access in South Africa,
particularly since the end of apartheid in 1994.

Electricity access in South Africa

Access to electricity in South Africa, as with access to other basic services such as housing,
education and water is paralleled by high levels of poverty and socio-economic inequality.
Under apartheid, industry, commerce and nearly all white households including remote
farms, enjoyed secure and reliable electricity connections, while few black townships and
informal settlements had access. Until 1994, approximately one-third of the population was
connected to the grid. During the transition to democracy, access to affordable electricity
became ‘a basic need and basic right’ with high political and cultural significance (Mayr
et al., 2015) and was central to the post-apartheid government’s Reconstruction and
Development Programme (RDP). Consequently, low-income households have typically
aspired to a grid connection rather than off-grid alternatives such as solar home systems
and solar water heaters (Wlokas, 2011).
Following the transition to democracy, the national electrification programme under the
RDP saw a dramatic rise in domestic connection rates, assisted by surplus generation
capacity and low electricity prices, which saw 87 per cent of households connected to the
grid by 2012 (SEA, 2015). Yet access to electricity is not reflected in electrification rates
alone, given that many households cannot afford to use the electricity to which they are
connected, despite the provision of a basic allocation of free electricity.3 Millions of low-
income houses are multiple fuel users, prioritising other energy sources such as paraffin,
wood and coal over electricity which leads to related problems such as air pollution, respi-
ratory illness and shack fires (Tait, 2016). By early 2000s, progress in the national electri-
fication programme had started to slow for various reasons, including the cost of additional
infrastructure required to connect sparsely populated rural areas (Bekker et al., 2008: 3132).
South Africa faces a large and rapidly growing urban population. As a legacy of apart-
heid era planning, South African cities are highly segregated and of low-density, which
presents significant financial and infrastructural challenges for electricity distribution.
Sixty five per cent of the country’s 52 million people live in urban areas, a figure anticipated
to rise to 70 per cent by 2030 (Wolpe and Reddy, 2015: 5). Forty per cent of the urban
population live in the country’s eight metropolitan municipalities, which consume 36 per
cent of national electricity consumption (SEA, 2015: 21).
One measure to address electricity access and affordability is the state’s free basic elec-
tricity (FBE) allowance, introduced in 2004 with the aim to provide ‘electricity to all’
through the provision of 50 KWh per month of free electricity to low-income households.4
Such an amount is deemed sufficient for basic lighting, media access and water heating but
critics charge it is insufficient for basic household needs, including as a result of the dete-
rioration of infrastructure and service standards (MacDonald, 2009).
Meanwhile, illegal electricity connections in townships and informal settlements have
increased since the country’s electricity tariffs started to rise (de Vos, 2016). Illegal connec-
tions, for which households often pay a middleman to bypass the municipality’s or Eskom’s
metres, have resulted in electrocutions from live wires and contributed to unplanned
power outages. Eskom estimates that electricity theft is costing the country R20 billion
($1.4 billion) a year (ESI-Africa, 2016). While such theft has typically been associated
Baker and Phillips 183

with low-income residents (von Schnitzler, 2008), recent evidence suggests that much of this
theft is organised and increasingly carried out by or on behalf of higher income consumers
or businesses (News24Wire, 2016b). In addition to illegal connections Eskom also refers to a
‘culture of non-payment’ including in Soweto, Sandton and Midrand. Subsequent
dDisconnections carried out by Eskom or municipalities have affected millions of low-
income households (Clarke and Yelland, 2016).
Finally, rising consumer tariffs have contributed to incentives for wealthier residential
and commercial consumers to establish their own source of solar PV generation, thereby
reducing revenues of either Eskom or the municipal distributor. In the following section, we
summarise the political, economic and regulatory context out of which this distributed
generation has emerged, including an entrenched and complex crisis within the utility
Eskom, failed attempts at sector reform and the evolving dynamics of electricity planning.

Eskom in context: A monopoly in crisis

Returning to concepts of the political economy of electricity introduced in the ‘A political
economy of electricity: From monopoly to disruption’ section, South Africa’s electricity
sector has long been the site of intense political, economic and social struggle. At the
heart of this struggle sits Eskom, described by Gentle (2009: 51) as an ‘index’ of the changing
character of the political configurations of South African accumulation. Eskom’s coal-fired
power plants, currently generating 85 per cent of the country’s electricity, are largely
concentrated in the north-east and connected other parts of the country via Eskom’s
high-voltage transmission grid. Eskom is responsible for 60 per cent of distribution,
which is consumed by one third of South Africa’s customers. The remaining two-thirds
are supplied by municipalities, Eskom’s largest customer category, accounting for just
over 40 per cent of total Eskom sales of which 80 per cent goes to 12 municipalities,
including the eight ‘metros’ discussed below.
Historically speaking South Africa’s electricity has been generated from low cost, low-
grade coal for cheap and abundant supply, which has historically served an export-oriented
mining and minerals industry, as part of a system commonly referred to as the minerals–
energy complex (Fine and Rustomjee, 1996). However, a series of complex developments in
recent decades have seen notable shifts in this system. Firstly, an economic slowdown and
associated decline in the contribution that mining and minerals beneficiation make to South
Africa’s gross domestic product (GDP) has resulted in reduced industrial electricity demand.
Despite this, heavy industry is still the country’s largest electricity consumer with 31 energy
intensive users accounting for 44 per cent of consumption (Energy-Intensive Users Group
(EIUG), 2017). Further changes include increased energy efficiency; the introduction of
national commitments to reduce carbon emissions in 2009; the introduction in 2011 of a
programme for the procurement of utility-scale renewable electricity5 by IPPs which now
constitutes approximately 2.9 per cent of the country’s system load in 2016 (Calitz et al.,
2017); and the increasing cost competitiveness of this renewable electricity compared with
that generated by Eskom’s new build coal. Formerly one of the world’s cheapest generators
of electricity until early 2000s, Eskom’s average electricity prices increased by approximately
200 per cent between 2008 and 2016,6 and current tariff decisions are now the subject of legal
review (Baker and Burton, 2018).
Eskom is now mired in a financial, political and technical crisis and front and centre of a
national scandal on state capture and corruption (Bhorat et al., 2017). The causes of this
crisis, which include decades of mismanagement, are long-standing and complex, while its
effects include periodic load-shedding since 2006 and unsustainably high levels of debt
184 Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space 37(1)

despite various government guarantees and a 2010 World Bank loan (Baker et al., 2015).
They have been further exacerbated by the downgrading of Eskom’s investment rating to
junk status by the ‘big three’ credit ratings agencies, in reflection of the country’s own
negative investment rating. Eskom’s financial situation is precarious, but given its lack of
transparency, is hard to determine precisely. The migration of customers away from
Eskom’s grid through the introduction of SSEG merely adds to the causes of its instability
as well as the financial sustainability of municipalities, discussed below.
Meanwhile since 2015 until the change in president at the start of 2018, Eskom undertook
desperate action to retain its monopoly strong hold and the paradigm of large-scale, cen-
tralised and state-owned supply (Bhorat et al., 2017). Firstly it blocked the progress of
country’s procurement programme for renewable energy from IPPs by refusing to approve
power purchase agreements for 37 projects, in an act which defied the utility’s obligations
under national policy. Secondly, with the support of the Presidency it pursued plans for a
9600 MW state-driven nuclear fleet.
While Eskom largely evaded the global trends of power sector reform discussed in
‘A political economy of electricity: From monopoly to disruption’ section, there are deep
and historical ideological differences in South Africa between those advocating for state
control of the electricity sector and those for market reform. As we now discuss, this has
been reflected in energy policy making since the end of apartheid.
In 1998, the White Paper on Energy Policy put forward the unbundling of South Africa’s
electricity sector into separate transmission, distribution and generation companies. The
White Paper was followed by a cabinet memorandum in 2001 announcing that 30 per
cent of electricity generation, including renewable energy, would come from IPPs, in turn
followed by a cabinet ruling that Eskom no longer be allowed to build new electricity
generation (Eberhard, 2007). The 2001 Eskom Conversion Act converted the utility from
a statutory body to a public company and required that it pay tax and dividends for the first
time. Eskom’s stakeholder-based electricity council was replaced by a board of directors and
the government, represented by the Minister of Public Enterprises, became Eskom’s sole
shareholder. But while the utility was formally converted to Eskom Holdings Ltd in 2002
(Bekker et al., 2008: 3129), key aspects of the 1998 White Paper were never implemented and
remain highly contested. Not least, a separate transmission utility has never been established
and the Independent Systems and Market Operator bill that was to have done this has been
continually postponed. Significantly, between 1998 and 2003, no new generation was built.
This failed privatisation process contributed to the delay in the construction of new
generation capacity. Faced with falling reserve margins and an imminent electricity crisis,
a 2003 cabinet memorandum put together by the Department of Public Enterprises
approved that Eskom should be re-allowed to construct more power plants but that
30 per cent of new generation should be built by IPPs. However in the absence of a regu-
latory framework, it was not until the introduction of the renewable energy procurement
programme in 2011 that generation from IPPs actually took place. Meanwhile, Eskom
initiated a new build programme in 2005, to date heavily delayed and subject to substantial
cost overruns, which includes the construction of two coal-fired power plants, Medupi and
Kusile, at 4800 MW each (Le Cordeur, 2017).
South Africa’s electricity policy has focussed largely on supply rather than demand.
Under apartheid, electricity policy and planning was highly secretive, had no formal depart-
mental mandate and was largely carried out by Eskom. Following the transition to democ-
racy the 2006 Electricity Regulation Act allocated responsibility for electricity planning to
what is now the Department of Energy (DoE), set up in 2009, and established the necessary
powers for the DoE to conduct an open integrated resource planning process, though given
Baker and Phillips 185

the DoE’s limited technical capacity the task of electricity planning has mostly been carried
out by Eskom’s System Operator (Baker et al., 2015). The Act however has been criticised
for containing a ‘municipal void’, given that it largely focussed on Eskom and gave limited
consideration to municipal distributors (Jones, 2012).
Recent gains towards transparency, participation and accountable planning in electricity
following the first Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) for electricity launched in 2011 have been
undermined, including by the stalling of the latest version of the plan and attempts by the
Presidency to push through a highly controversial nuclear procurement programme
(Winkler, 2017). Under the 2006 Electricity Regulation Act, before an electricity generation
project can be approved, it must align with the technological allocations set by the IRP in
order for the National Energy Regulator of South Africa (NERSA) to be able to grant the
project a licence. The first version of the IRP, approved in 2011 included an allocation for
17.8 GW of renewable energy which if built would deliver nine per cent of electricity supply
by 2030. However, distributed generation was not included in the modelling and was merely
flagged as an area for further research and analysis. The subsequent draft update released in
2013 estimated that embedded generation could reach 22.5GW by 2030 and suggested that
incentivising its implementation could result in greater benefits than ignoring or resisting it.
Yet this draft was stalled on the basis that it questioned the need for a national nuclear
programme (Baker, 2016).
The latest draft of the IRP, eventually released in November 2016 for public comment,
proposes a generation mix to 2050 and allows for up to 17,600 MW for solar PV. While this
is an increase on previous drafts, it has been criticised by renewable energy groups such as
the South African Photovoltaic Industry Association for its failure to make specific provi-
sion for SSEG and to recognise the impact of disruptive technologies; for using outdated
cost assumptions for wind and solar PV; and unjustified constraints on how much renewable
energy generation can be built in any one year (Baker and Burton, 2018). The plan also
proposes 20,000 MW of nuclear to be built by 2037. This draft has also been stalled, fol-
lowing confirmations that the new IRP will only be updated in the last quarter of the current
fiscal year, ending March 2018.
As this section has established, the entrenched nature of South Africa’s electricity policy
and planning has long been heavily dominated by the interests of large-scale, state-owned,
centralised supply, in which municipal interests have had little representation. Furthermore,
limited provision has been made for the rapid emergence of disruptive technologies which
poses a significant challenge to any reconfiguration of the country’s electricity generation,
transmission and distribution system. With this in mind, the following section examines the
politics of electricity distribution and the role of municipalities within this.

The politics of distribution

Municipalities are responsible for just over 40 per cent of electricity distribution in South
Africa, purchasing electricity in bulk from Eskom at wholesale prices which they then mark
up and sell on to the end user. Of 2577 metropolitan, district and local municipalities
(Statistics South Africa, 2015a: 1), approximately 174 municipalities have been licensed
by NERSA to serve as electricity distributors, a role which includes maintaining infrastruc-
ture, providing new connections, and setting minimum service level standards and pricing
and subsidy levels for poor consumers (South African Local Government Association
(SALGA), 2014). Municipalities use revenue from electricity sales to cross-subsidise the
provision of other basic services.8 Mid- to high-income consumers are a particularly
186 Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space 37(1)

important source of this revenue, which also cross-subsidises electricity and/or new con-
nections for low-income households (Janisch et al., 2012: 3).
As a result of the spatial legacy of apartheid, South Africa’s municipalities differ widely
on numerous counts. These include population size and density, levels of income, financial,
human and institutional resources, level of service provision and associated cost structures
(Grant, 2015). They further differ significantly in terms of type of electricity consumer (i.e.
domestic, commercial and industrial) and levels of electricity consumption (Yelland, 2015).
Many of the best performing and most affluent municipalities are located in the Western
Cape Province and Gauteng, while the worst performing with the highest rates of poverty
are in Eastern Cape Province or the former ‘Bantustans’, territories set aside for black South
Africans under the 1913 Land Act. These socio-economic inequalities are enmeshed with
political ones and following Butler (2016), while ‘the metropolitan municipalities. . .are pow-
erful sites of power and patronage, and present priceless opportunities to demonstrate a
capacity to govern’, poorer municipalities have high levels of poverty and unemployment,
poor rates of service provision and fragmented governance structures.
South Africa’s institutions of municipal governance are also institutions of electricity
distribution meaning that in the case of urban municipalities in particular, ‘electricity rev-
enue and city financial survival’ are closely linked (Janisch et al., 2012: 1). Given that
national government grants are insufficient for South Africa’s municipalities to meet their
developmental and redistributive mandate, municipalities are forced to operate on a cost
recovery basis, not only from the sales of electricity and water but also property rates and
investment from the private sector (Wolpe and Reddy, 2016: 19). Approximately 30 per cent
of total municipal income was earned from sales of electricity during the 2013/2014 financial
year, while electricity purchases made up to 22.1 per cent of total operating expenditure
(Statistics South Africa, 2015a). Grid defection via SSEG coupled with Eskom’s tariff hikes
therefore pose a threat to such a model.
Generally speaking, urban municipalities within Gauteng and the Western Cape are more
dependent on electricity as a source of revenue than peri-urban and rural ones (Statistics
South Africa, 2015b). However, some of the smaller municipalities still earn nearly half of
their total income from electricity sales, including uMhlathuze, Umtshezi, KwaDukuza in
KwaZulu-Natal, Langeberg in the Western Cape and Tlokwe in the North West Province
(Grant, 2015). There are eight metropolitan municipalities in South Africa which have exclu-
sive municipal and legislative authority in their areas: City of Tshwane, City of Johannesburg,
Ekurhuleni, eThekwini, Manguang, Buffalo City, Nelson Mandela Bay and City of Cape
Town. These ‘metros’ constitute the country’s largest cities with over 500,000 inhabitants and
represent ‘intense nodes of activity and energy consumption’, accounting for 60 per cent of
total economic activity, 42 per cent of the national population and generating 39 per cent of
national energy-related carbon emissions (Wolpe and Reddy, 2016: 9).
High-income consumers have been particularly affected by municipal level tariff increases
not least due to the ‘inclining block tariff’ (IBT) (Cape Town Electricity Services, 2015).
Under the IBT, the more an electricity customer consumes the more they pay, a structure
which parallels the country’s tax system under which high earners pay the majority of the
country’s taxes (de Vos, 2016). Consequently, high-income consumers have been the most
affected by increasing electricity tariffs and are therefore the most likely to seek alternatives.
Indeed the valuable cross-subsidy that the IBT provides, both for energy services to the poor
and other essential municipal activities is declining and may challenge the revenue base
of South African municipalities (Mayr et al., 2015: 11), relating to discussions of the
‘utility death spiral’ discussed in the ‘A political economy of electricity: From monopoly
to disruption’ section.
Baker and Phillips 187

The nature of tariff setting within and between Eskom and municipalities is not straight-
forward or transparent. Firstly, NERSA is mandated to approve licenses for electricity
generation, distribution and transmission and set the tariffs at which electricity is sold.
These include tariffs at which Eskom sells electricity to individual end users and in bulk
supply to municipalities, as well as the tariffs that municipalities charge to end users. In
recent years, tariff setting has brought Eskom into conflict with NERSA, which has refused
to approve the significant tariff increases requested by the utility. Establishing a tariff at
which SSEG will be bought by Eskom and municipalities is central to establishing how the
costs and benefits of SSEG are accounted for and distributed. But the national regulation
for doing so is still catching up as discussed in the ‘Tensions in the transition’ section.
Secondly, while ‘municipalities were able to supply data on total electricity bought from
Eskom and total municipal sales broken down by tariff’ (SEA, 2015: 18), electricity tariff
categories and user categories differ across municipalities so it is hard to compare. Indeed,
according to NERSA, mark-ups range from 20 per cent to 150 per cent (Bukula, 2013).
Significantly, the surplus generated from electricity distribution has declined substantially
over the last decade (National Treasury, 2013; Peters, 2015): as Eskom’s tariffs have
increased faster than inflation, it has become harder for municipalities to pass on the
costs to the consumer, which has reduced the income available both for core functions of
the electricity department and other city functions (Janisch et al., 2012; Wolpe and Reddy,
2015). Despite the fact that NERSA restricts the extent to which municipalities can pass the
increased costs imposed by Eskom on to their customers, NERSA nonetheless approved an
increase in municipal tariffs by 7.64 per cent with effect from 1 July 2016 (News24wire,
2016a). The unpredictability of Eskom’s tariffs hikes has also made it difficult for munic-
ipalities to be able to plan their expenditure.
Failed attempts to reform South Africa’s electricity supply industry after the end of
apartheid, discussed in the ‘Eskom in context: A monopoly in crisis’ section, were paralleled
by failed attempts to restructure the electricity distribution industry. Under apartheid,
municipalities distributed electricity to historically white areas and Eskom to the black
townships and rural homelands. Post-apartheid restructuring to tackle the racial segregation
of local governance structures reduced the number of electricity distributors significantly.
A subsequent process initiated in 2003 was to have integrated Eskom’s electricity distribu-
tion business with the country’s municipal distributors in order to create six regional
electricity distributors (REDs). Such a move, it has been argued, was a further attempt to
de-racialise the electricity industry by facilitating a redistribution of political power and
technical and financial capacity from the wealthier metropolitan municipal distributors to
poorer electricity distributors (Gaunt, 2008: 3450). It was also anticipated that the restruc-
turing would address the inconsistency of tariffs which still exists between different
municipal distributors and Eskom, the absence of income-generating industrial customers
in many small black municipalities, and the backlog of infrastructure refurbishment and
maintenance in many municipalities, which remains an on-going challenge (de Beer, 2016).
However the restructuring process failed and was eventually shelved in 2010 (SALGA,
2014), in part due to resistance by many municipalities who feared that the formation of
REDs would threaten the revenue they generate from on-selling bulk electricity to end users
(Eberhard, 2007: 5311). Such resistance has continued and now poses a key challenge to the
introduction of SSEG.
Though both Eskom and municipalities are responsible for electricity distribution, there
are long-standing tensions and little coordination between them and a dual system therefore
exists (Swilling, 2014). Despite the fact that Eskom controls 60 per cent of electricity dis-
tribution, under the post-apartheid constitution, ‘electricity reticulation’ is listed as a local
188 Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space 37(1)

government responsibility (National Treasury, 2008: 109). Such legislation lies at the heart
of tensions between these two institutions, firstly because of Eskom’s apparent objection to
municipalities using electricity tariffs for cross-subsidy (Swilling, 2014) and secondly due to
the debt owed to Eskom by many municipalities. According to Eskom total municipal
arrears stood at R6 billion at end March 2016, of which the majority is held by 20 munic-
ipalities alone (Eskom, 2016: 41). Under the 2006 Electricity Regulation Act and the supply
agreement with municipalities, Eskom is entitled to disconnect the supply of electricity to
municipalities that have defaulted and has recently done so (Engineering News, 2016). The
advent of SSEG therefore adds a further dimension to these tensions over who controls and
benefits from the country’s electricity distribution system.
The politics of distribution are also complicated by the fact that in some cases Eskom
distributes directly to customers within the licensed municipal distributors though an accu-
rate picture is difficult to acquire due to lack of publicly available distribution data (SEA,
2015: 17). In either case, customers have no choice over who they are supplied by and both
Eskom and municipalities effectively operate as ‘geographic monopolies’ (Yelland, 2015).
As we now discuss in the ‘Tensions in the transition’ section, with the rise of SSEG, the
distribution network is up for further contestation that goes beyond Eskom and municipal-
ities, including regulatory and legal uncertainty over the right to generate electricity.

Tensions in the transition

As the technology costs of solar PV continue to decline, South Africa’s electricity rates go up
and Eskom’s crisis escalates, the installation of grid-tied SSEG has become an increasingly
attractive option for businesses and high-income residential household customers. Recent
years have seen the rapid adoption of SSEG in South Africa (Mayr et al., 2015) with
estimated installations of over 200 MW by September 2016 (Spencer, 2016), compared to
just 35 MW in early 2015 (de Vos, 2016). However, these developments have been taking
place in the absence of an appropriate regulatory framework coupled with concern and/or
resistance from municipalities and Eskom, whose revenue is threatened by grid defection.
The installation of SSEG has proceeded apace and a small number of cities, including
Cape Town and Nelson Mandela Bay, have introduced systems for ‘net metering’ which
means that generators of SSEG are remunerated for the energy that they generate to the
municipal grid (Green Cape, 2016, Spencer, 2016). In Cape Town, 18 commercial customers
and 42 homes are now generating their own electricity from rooftop solar PV and feeding
excess electricity into the city’s grid (Cloete, 2016). However, while this may be seen as a
positive step in terms of the introduction of renewable energy technologies, in socio-
economic terms it will reduce revenue for the city. Walwyn (2015: 2) discusses an anticipated
decrease ‘of between 17 per cent and 25 per cent in electricity revenue collection from the
residential sector alone and significant additional potential losses driven by similar dynamics
in the commercial sector’.
Meanwhile there is still lack of regulatory clarity over the ability of municipalities and
Eskom to buy and sell power generated by SSEG, particularly that which is greater than 100
kW (Janisch et al., 2012), in addition to legislative and revenue limits (Wolpe and Reddy,
2016: 17) and technical challenges. The Standard Conditions for Embedded Generation within
Municipal Boundaries, produced by NERSA in 2011 suggested that embedded generators of
up to 100 kW who registered with municipalities should be allowed to sell power to munic-
ipalities. However, these standards lacked clarity with regards to the connection to Eskom’s
grid and because they were launched without due public consultation, could only be
Baker and Phillips 189

considered guidelines. The 100 kW limit was also criticised by stakeholders for being too
small for most proposed SSEGs (NERSA, 2015: 18).
Subsequently in February 2015, NERSA launched a stakeholder consultation process for
regulatory rules on SSEG for projects of up to 1 MW, which was to have been completed by
the end of May 2015 (NERSA, 2015). However the DoE stalled on completing the drafting
of these licensing regulations, stating that they could not be approved until the 2006
Electricity Regulation Act (discussed in the ‘Eskom in context: A monopoly in crisis’ sec-
tion) had been amended in order to adequately reflect the language on privately-owned
generation. It took until December 2016 for this to happen, after which the DoE published
in the Government Gazette a ‘draft licensing exemption and registration notice’ for public
comment. If approved this document would remove the requirement for SSEG below 1 MW
to obtain licensing from NERSA in order to feed into the distribution network. While this
draft is seen as a potentially positive step in removing regulatory hurdles to SSEG, the fact
that it is capped at 1 MW is still seen as a restriction (Williams et al., 2016). At the time of
writing it was still in draft form.
Beyond an effective regulatory framework, the tariff structure is also a critical consider-
ation. Current electricity tariff structures in South Africa do not reflect the fixed and retail-
related costs involved in managing, maintaining and operating the grid. Therefore as SSEG
is installed, it will result in a loss of revenue to the distributor (be that Eskom or the
municipality). This invokes arguments of the free-rider effect, ‘where households with PV
systems do not pay fully for their share of the system’s fixed costs, shifting the burden to
households without PV systems’ (IEA, 2013: 218). As the example of various US states
demonstrates, utilities argue that distributed generators should be charged to access the grid
that utilities are paying to maintain (Hess, 2015). Such a scenario raises further questions
over how a fair contribution to grid availability and operation costs should be allocated.
Finally, South Africa’s distribution network both at the municipal and Eskom level, is
largely unprepared for the introduction of SSEG, which will introduce a significant level of
technical complexity into a system that thus far has primarily operated on the basis of a one
way flow of electricity. Given the design of the distribution network and the maintenance
backlog discussed above, there are limits to how much self-generation it will be able to
absorb, while installations, many of which are unregistered (SAMSET, 2014:2) are being
carried out with limited or no planning which may mean that latecomers to the installation
of SSEG may not be able to connect to the grid (de Vos, 2016). The seasonal variability of
renewable energy will add a further challenge to this, given that consumers use more elec-
tricity in winter when there is less solar PV generation capacity available. Moreover the
generation output of solar PV is at its greatest in the middle of the day which does not match
up with energy demand, which peaks during the morning and evening. As Jones (2012)
explains, ‘net metered PV generation takes place at times when it is relatively cheaper to
purchase energy from Eskom, and consumption tales place when it is relatively more expen-
sive to purchase electricity from Eskom’. How such challenges are managed will be critical
to the long-term social and economic sustainability of SSEG.

Conclusion
As we have argued, the distribution of electricity represents an important yet neglected
aspect of the politics of low carbon energy transitions. The conventional model of electricity
supply and demand is subject to significant change as part of a global technological and
infrastructural transformation in the way in which electricity is generated, transmitted and
distributed. Consequently, fossil-fuel dependent, centralised electricity utilities, of which
190 Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space 37(1)

South Africa’s Eskom is just one example, are under challenge. Not only does this offer new
opportunities for both consumers and producers of energy but in some countries, partic-
ularly in the global North, has also resulted in new regulatory models, including demand
response markets (Mouat, 2016; PwC, 2016).
Embedded generation offers a potential challenge to the historical structures of South
Africa’s electricity sector as well as a potential opportunity to provide affordable, low-
carbon alternatives to a crisis ridden, largely coal-fired electricity grid with ever rising tariffs.
Yet, thus far the ability of these technological developments to disrupt Eskom’s current
monopoly stronghold – as well as blockages at the municipal level – have been minimal.
Moreover, response from the sphere of South Africa’s energy policy and planning has thus
far been one of either resistance or inertia. While the introduction of distributed generation
has implications for the affordability of electricity, safeguards are not yet in place to ensure
that the generation of renewable energy by and for the wealthy does not take place at the
cost of service provision to the poor. With this in mind, we offer the following four
conclusions.
Firstly, there are significant political and economic challenges to any potential reconfigu-
ration of South Africa’s electricity sector. These challenges include: the significant resistance
posed by Eskom and its entrenched and long-standing monopoly control over the country’s
transmission, generation and 60 per cent of distribution; the structural legacy resulting from
the failure of reform in both the electricity supply and distribution industries in the after-
math of apartheid; the fact that Eskom and municipalities stand to lose revenue from the
introduction of SSEG which therefore removes incentives to facilitate it; the stalling of the
IRP and the absence of an electricity planning document which affords the necessary pri-
ority to municipal distributors and specific provision for embedded generation; and finally
the absence of regulatory clarity over the introduction of SSEG. Deep seated tensions
between Eskom and municipalities over who has the right to distribute electricity further
contribute to the complexity.
Secondly, the loss of cross subsidy for both Eskom and municipalities from high-end
customers who have started to install solar PV systems has led to what Mayr et al. (2015: 11)
identify as a challenge for any just transition, and a tension between establishing a low-
carbon energy supply at the same time as ensuring affordable electricity and other basic
services for low-income households. The installation of SSEG has largely benefitted wealth-
ier consumers while low-income households and those who do not own property are unable
to buy themselves out of an increasingly unreliable and expensive electricity supply. This, in
addition to the implications for the financial sustainability of Eskom as the monopoly utility
and municipalities who may ultimately be left with low-income consumers and non-payers.
The interdependence between the sale and distribution of electricity and the wider system of
public administration within municipalities and Eskom therefore presents a challenge to
systemic change. While South Africa may be some way off from the so-called ‘utility death
spiral’ (Killeen, 2016) which is arguably being experienced currently by some of Europe’s
large utilities (Lacey, 2014), other factors as discussed in the ‘Eskom in context: A monopoly
in crisis’ section are also at play which are contributing to the crisis within Eskom and that
of some municipalities. This begs the question as to what the alternative methods should be
of generating the revenue that has been lost from electricity payments.
Thirdly, the case of South Africa demonstrates that the growth of distributed technolo-
gies will require new players and institutions as well as a far greater scope for integrated
energy planning at a local and municipal level. This in turn points to a much bigger role for
local government in the low carbon transition particularly, if it is to ensure greater demo-
cratic control. Furthermore, given that distributed generation involves much more complex
Baker and Phillips 191

and interactive energy flows of energy than a centralised model, not only does the require-
ment for grid flexibility increase, but also the challenges for planning, regulation and own-
ership. Furthermore, at the municipal level, the introduction of SSEG may result in the
diversion of critical revenue from high-income consumers and consequently the ability of
some municipalities to provide basic services, including electricity. This undermines assump-
tions of inclusiveness and participation often associated with decentralised provision.
Finally, the South African experience provides insights into how political institutions
have responded to social and technological drivers of change. In South Africa incentives
to install SSEG have not derived from government policy or regulations, but instead from
high-income consumers responding to a national electricity crisis, rising tariffs, declining
costs of solar PV technologies, and reduced public trust in the grid to provide reliable and
affordable supply. For some, distributed generation therefore represents an increasingly
attractive investment with which regulation has not kept pace. The South African experience
offers a poignant contrast with that of high-income countries such as Germany and the UK
where the introduction of distributed generation has been encouraged by strong regulation
and subsidies. Further comparative research in this area is needed as the rapid evolution of
disruptive technologies continues to reconfigure long-standing institutions and structures of
electricity governance.

Author’s note
Jon Phillips is now affialited to University of Exeter.

Acknowledgements
Thank you to Federico Caprotti, Stefan Bouzarovski, Kim Coetzee, Jiska de Groot, Stephen Essex,
Deborah Potts, Saska Petrova, Yachika Reddy and Peta Wolpe for all their suggestions and guidance.
Thank you also to all the research participants who gave up their time to let us interview them
interviews and finally to the two anonymous reviewers who gave really helpful suggestions on how
to improve our clarity of argument.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or
publication of this article.

Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or
publication of this article: This work was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council
(ESRC), grant number ES/N014138/1 (Urban transformation in South Africa through co-designing
energy services provision pathways) with additional support from Engineering and Physical Sciences
Research Council (EPSRC) grant number: EP/K011790/1 (Research Centre on Innovation and
Energy Demand).

Notes
1. Defined as households that consume more than 700 kWh per month.
2. While small-scale embedded generation can also refer to off-grid installations, for instance in rural
areas, here we focus on installations by consumers connected to the national grid, which are
potentially more disruptive. South Africa’s national energy regulator describes an embedded gen-
erator as ‘an entity that operates one or more units that is connected to the Distribution System.
192 Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space 37(1)

Alternatively, a legal entity that desires to connect one or more units to the Distribution System’,
and distributed generation as ‘the installation and operation of electric power generation units
connected directly to the distribution network or connected to the network on the customer site
of the meter’ (NERSA, 2015: 4).
3. According to the DoE, 3.2 million households lack access to electricity, of which 75 per cent are
supplied by Eskom and 25 by municipalities (DoE, 2013).
4. Currently set at a monthly income of R2300 (National Treasury, 2013).
5. Roof top solar PV is excluded from this programme which sets a minimum of 1 MW for projects
under the small programme and of 5 MW under the main programme.
6. Calculated from Eskom’s figures: www.eskom.co.za/CustomerCare/TariffsAndCharges/Pages/
Tariff_History.aspx
7. The number of municipalities was reduced from 278 to 257 in 2016 and their boundaries redrawn,
the most significant boundary change since 2000 (National Treasury, 2016).
8. Guidelines and regulations on how revenue from electricity tariffs should be spent are outlined in
the Municipal Systems Act and the Municipal Fiscal Powers and Functions Act (see Peters, 2015
and NERSA, 2016).

References
Baker L (2016) Sustainability transitions and the politics of electricity planning in South Africa. In:
Brauch HG, Oswald Spring U,  Grin J, et al. (eds) Handbook on Sustainability Transition and
Sustainable Peace. London: Springer, pp. 793–809.
Baker L and Burton J (2018) The politics of procurement and the low carbon transition in South
Africa. In: Goldthau A, Keating M and Kuzemko C (eds) Handbook of the International Political
Economy of Energy and Natural Resources. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, pp. 91–106
Baker L, Burton J, Godinho C, et al. (2015) The Political Economy of Decarbonisation: Exploring the
Dynamics of South Africa’s Electricity Sector. Cape Town: University of Cape Town Energy
Research Centre.
Becker S, Beveridge R and Naumann M (2015) Remunicipalization in German cities: Contesting neo-
liberalism and reimagining urban governance? Space and Polity 19: 76–90.
Bekker B, Eberhard A, Gaunt C, et al. (2008) South Africa’s rapid electrification programme: Policy,
institutional, planning, financing and technical innovations. Energy Policy 36: 3125–3137.
Bhorat H, Buthelezi M, Chipkin I, et al. (2017) Betrayal of the Promise: How South Africa Is Being
Stolen. Johannesburg: PARI.
Bolton R and Foxon TJ (2015) Infrastructure transformation as a socio-technical process –
Implications for the governance of energy distribution networks in the UK. Technological
Forecasting and Social Change 90: 538–550.
Bouzarovski S, Tirado Herrero S, Petrova S, et al. (2017) Multiple transformations: Theorizing energy
vulnerability as a socio-spatial phenomenon. Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography
99(1): 20–41.
Bukula T (2013) Regulating municipal electricity distributors. Powerpoint presentation. Available at:
http://www.sanea.org.za/CalendarOfEvents/2013/SANEALecturesJHB/Apr16/ThembaniBukula-
NERSA.pdf (accessed 30 July 2017).
Butler A (2016) Key actors do not want president to go just yet. Business Day, 8 April.
Calitz J, Mushwana C and Bischof-Niemz T (2017) Statistics of Utility-Scale Solar PV, Wind and CSP
in South Africa in 2016. Pretoria: CSIR Energy Centre.
Cape Town Electricity Services (2015) Residential electricity tariff explanation, with effect from
1 April 2015. Available at: https://www.capetown.gov.za/en/electricity/Elec%20Tariffs%
20201516/Residential%20Electricity%20Tariff%20Explanation%202015.pdf
Clarke A and Yelland C (2016) An ‘act of madness’ precipitates civil unrest in Zandspruit, EE
Publishers, 11 April. Available at: http://www.ee.co.za/article/act-madness-precipitates-civil-
unrest-zandspruit.html (accessed 30 July 2017).
Baker and Phillips 193

Cloete K (2016) Rules uncertainty curbing Cape Town’s embedded generation enthusiasm.
Engineering News, 15 April.
Costello KW (2015) Major challenges of distributed generation for state utility regulators. The
Electricity Journal 28: 8–25.
Costello KW and Hemphill RC (2014) Electric utilities’ ‘death spiral’: Hyperbole or reality? The
Electricity Journal 27(10): 7–26.
Cumbers A (2012) Reclaiming Public Ownership: Making Space for Economic Democracy.
London: Zed.
de Beer W (2016) Maintenance backlog impact on service delivery. EE Publishers, 11 April.
de Vos D (2016) Roof top solar PV will be a game changer. Daily Maverick, 21 April.
Dodge D (2013) How distributed generation is revolutionizing energy in Canada. Huffington Post,
17 August.
DoE (Department of Energy) (2013) IEP planning report workshop: overview of universal energy
access strategy’. Powerpoint Presentation, Department of Energy, Pretoria, South Africa. Available
at: http://www.energy.gov.za/files/IEP/Polokwane/Overview-of-Universal-Energy-Access-Strategy.
pdf (accessed 30 July 2017).
Eberhard A, Kolker J. & Leigland J. (2014) South Africa’s Renewable Energy IPP Procurement
Program: Success Factors and Lessons, PPIAF.
Eberhard A (2007) The political economy of power sector reform in South Africa. In: Victor D and
Heller TC (eds) The Political Economy of Power Sector Reform. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, pp. 215–253.
Eberhard A and Godinho C (2017) A review and exploration of the status, context and political
economy of power sector reforms in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and Latin America. MIR
Working Paper – February 2017.
Eid C, Reneses GJ, Frıas Marın P, et al. (2014) The economic effect of electricity net-metering with
solar PV: Consequences for network cost recovery, cross subsidies and policy objectives. Energy
Policy 75: 244–254.
EIUG (Energy Intensive Users Group) (2017) About. Available at: http://eiug.org.za/about/ (accessed
30 July 2017).
Engineering News (2016) Eskom suspends disconnections in four Mpumalanga municipalities, 11 April.
ESI-Africa (2016) Eskom: Electricity theft tip-offs hits high, 22 November.
Eskom (2016) Eskom Integrated Report 2016. Johannesburg: Eskom.
Fine B and Rustomjee Z (1996) The Political Economy of South Africa: From Minerals-Energy
Complex to Industrialisation. London: C. Hurst.
Gaunt CT (2008) Electricity distribution industry restructuring in South Africa: A case study. Energy
Policy 36(9): 3448–3459.
Gentle L (2009) Escom to Eskom: From racial Keynesian capitalism to neo-liberalism (1910–1994). In:
Macdonald D (ed) Electric Capitalism: Recolonising Africa on the Grid. Cape Town: HSRC Press,
pp. 50–72.
Grant L (2015) How electricity powers the revenue of municipalities. Mail & Guardian, 17 July.
Gratwick KN and Eberhard A (2008) Demise of the standard model for power sector reform and the
emergence of hybrid power markets. Energy Policy 36(10): 3948–3960.
Green Cape (2016) Status of SSEG in South African municipalities. Report, August 2016.
Hess D (2015) The politics of niche-regime conflicts: Distributed solar energy in the United States.
Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions 19: 42–50.
Hughes TP (1983) Networks of Power: Electrification in Western Society, 1880–1930. Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press.
International Energy Agency (2013) World Energy Outlook. Paris: IEA.
International Energy Agency (2016) Re-Powering Markets: Market Design and Regulation during the
Transition to Low Carbon Power Systems. Paris: IEA.
Janisch A, Euston-Brown M and Borchers M (2012) The Potential Impact of Efficiency Measures and
Distributed Generation on Municipal Electricity Revenue: Double Whammies and Death Spirals.
Cape Town: Sustainable Energy Africa.
194 Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space 37(1)

Jones B (2012) Net metering a municipal perspective: The road to approved grid connection.
Powerpoint Presentation, August 2012. Available at: http://www.solarwholesale.co.za/Solar%
20Power%20Grid%20Connection%20%20Case%20Study.pdf (accessed 30 July 2017).
Killeen P (2016) Moving beyond the generation fixation: Grid transformation key to delivering on
Paris. World Watch Institute Blog, 17 August.
Korsten N (2015) An investigation into the financial impact of residential embedded generation on local
governments in South Africa: A case study into Stellenbosch Municipality. MPhil Thesis,
Stellenbosch University.
Lacey S (2014) This is what the utility death spiral looks like’. Greentech Media, 4 March.
Lafford T (2016) Smart power: Putting bills payers before politics. E3G, Blog, 22 November.
Le Cordeur M (2017) Strike warning: Numsa warns of more Medupi and Kusile delays. Fin 24, 18 July.
Lehtonen M and Nye S (2009) History of electricity network control and distributed generation in the
UK and Western Denmark. Energy Policy 37(6): 2338–2345.
Lockwood M, Kuzemko C, Mitchell C, et al. (2017) Historical institutionalism and the politics of
sustainable energy transitions: A research agenda. Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space
35(2): 312–333.
Macdonald D (2009) Electric capitalism: Conceptualising electricity and capital accumulation in
(South) Africa. In: Macdonald D (ed) Electric Capitalism: Recolonising Africa on the Grid. Cape
Town: HSRC Press, pp. 1–49.
Macdonald D (2016) To corporatize or not to corporatize (and if so, how?). Utilities Policy
40: 107–114.
Mayr D, Schmid E, Trollip H, et al. (2015) The impact of residential photovoltaic power on electricity
sales revenues in Cape Town, South Africa. Utilities Policy 36: 10–23.
Moss T, Becker S and Naumann M (2015) Whose energy transition is it, anyway? Organisation and
ownership of the Energiewende in villages, cities and regions. Local Environment 20(12): 1547–1563.
Mouat S (2016) A new paradigm for utilities: The rise of the “prosumer”’. RE New Economy, 24 June.
Available at: http://reneweconomy.com.au/new-paradigm-utilities-rise-prosumer-26384/ (accessed
30 July 2017).
National Treasury (2008) ‘Electricity’. In: National Treasury (ed) Local Government Budgets and
Expenditure Review: 2003/04–2009/10. Available at: http://www.treasury.gov.za/publications/igfr/
2008/lg/2008%20LG%20Budgets%20and%20Expendiure%20Review%20 (accessed 30
July 2017).
National Treasury (2013) New local government equitable share formula and free basic energy.
Available at: http://www.ameu.co.za/Portals/16/Documents/Municipal%20Issues/PCE%20LG%
20Equitable%20Share%20Formula_18%20Jun%202013.pdf (accessed 30 July 2017).
National Treasury (2016) Division of revenue and spending by provinces and municipalities.
Available at: http://www.treasury.gov.za/documents/national%20budget/2016/review/chapter%
206.pdf (accessed 30 July 2017).
NERSA (National Energy Regulator of South Africa) (2015) Small-Scale Embedded Generation:
Regulatory Rules, NERSA. Pretoria: NERSA.
NERSA (2016) Municipal Tariff Guideline Increase, Benchmarks and Proposed Timelines for Municipal
Tariff Approval Process for the 2016/17 Financial Year, Consultation Paper. Pretoria: NERSA.
News24Wire (2016a) .7.64 Per cent Eskom hike to hit municipalities in July. Engineering News,
19 April.
News24Wire (2016b) Small businesses, not shack-dwellers behind most W. Cape electricity theft.
26 April.
Peters S (2015) The impact of electricity price increases on municipalities. In: Submission for the 2015/
16 Division of Revenue. Available at: http://ffc.co.za/(accessed 30 July 2017).
Price Waterhouse Coopers (PwC) (2016) Capturing value from disruption: Technology and innovation
in an era of energy transformation. Report, PwC. Available at: https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/
energy-utilities-mining/pdf/capturing-value-from-disruption.pdf (accessed 30 July 2017).
Rocholl N and Bolton R (2016) Berlin’s electricity distribution grid: An urban energy transition in a
national regulatory context. Technology Analysis & Strategic Management 28(10): 1182–1194.
Baker and Phillips 195

SALGA (South African Local Government Association) (2014) The role of municipalities as a Service
Authorities for Electricity provision. In: Paper prepared by SALGA for the AMEU Committees,
Draft, 27th August 2014.
Supporting African Municipalities in Sustainable Energy Transitions (SAMSET) (2014) Small-scale
embedded generation in South African municipalities (solar PV focus). Available at: http://samset
project.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Embedded-Generation-Case-Study-South-Africa-FINAL.
pdf (accessed 30 July 2017).
Scott A and Seth P (2013) The political economy of electricity distribution in developing countries.
Available at: https://www.odi.org/publications/7378-political-economy-electricity-distribution-
developing-countries-review-literature
Sen A (2014) Divergent Paths to a Common Goal? An Overview of Challenges to Electricity Sector
Reform in Developing Versus Developed Countries. London, UK: Oxford Institute for
Energy Studies.
Sioshansi F (2014) Distributed Generation and Its Implications for the Utility Industry. Cambridge MA:
Academic Press.
Skillings S and Lafford T (2016) Plugging the energy gap. E3G Blog. Available at: https://www.e3g.
org/library/plugging-the-energy-gap (accessed 30 July 2017).
Spencer F (2016) The competitive nature of rooftop PV in the African market. ESI-Africa,
7 September.
Statistics South Africa (2015a) Financial census of municipalities for the year ended 30 June 2014.
Available at: http://www.statssa.gov.za/publications/P9114/P9114June2014.pdf (accessed 30
July 2017).
Statistics South Africa (2015b) Electricity redistribution: Which councils are likely to feel the pinch?
Available at: http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p¼4772 (accessed 30 July 2017).
Sustainable Energy Africa (2015) State of Energy in South African Cities. Cape Town: Sustainable
Energy Africa.
Swilling M (2014) Contesting inclusive urbanism in a divided city: The limits to the neoliberalisation of
Cape Town’s energy system. Urban Studies 51: 3180–3197.
Swilling M, Musango J and Wakeford J (2016) Developmental states and sustainability transitions:
Prospects of a just transition in South Africa. Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning
18(5): 650–672.
Tait L (2016) Targeting Informal Households: Diversifying Energy Supply for the Poor in Cape Town.
Cape Town: Energy Research Centre.
Tshehla MG (2014) Barriers to, and policy opportunities for, the growth of renewable energy
technologies in South Africa: Rethinking the role of municipalities. MPhil thesis, Stellenbosch
University. Available at: http://scholar.sun.ac.za/handle/10019.1/86279 (accessed 30 July 2017).
Verbong GPJ and Geels FW (2010) Exploring sustainability transitions in the electricity sector with
socio-technical pathways. Technological Forecasting and Social Change 77(8): 1214–1221.
Victor D and Heller T (eds) (2007) The Political Economy of Power Sector Reform: The Experiences of
Five Major Developing Countries. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
von Schnitzler A (2008) Citizenship prepaid: Water, calculability, and techno-politics in South Africa.
Journal of Southern African Studies 34(4): 899–917.
Walwyn DR (2015) Local government resists the implementation of renewable technologies. In:
Hostettler S, Gadgil A and Hazboun E (eds) Sustainable Access to Energy in the Global South:
Essential Technologies and Implementation Approaches. Switzerland: Springer International
Publishing, pp. 155–165.
Winkler H (2017) South African president’s last ditch effort to ram through a nuclear power deal. The
Conversation, 9 November.
Wlokas HL (2011) What contribution does the installation of solar water heaters make
towards the alleviation of energy poverty in South Africa? Journal of Energy in Southern Africa
22(2): 27–39.
196 Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space 37(1)

Wolpe P and Reddy Y (2015) The Contribution of Low-Carbon Cities to South Africa’s Greenhouse Gas
Emissions Reduction Goals: Briefing on Urban Energy Use and Greenhouse Gas Emissions. Seattle:
Stockholm Environment Institute.
Wolpe P and Reddy R (2016) South African cities of the future: A low carbon urban development
path: the challenges and the opportunities. Presented at the African Centre for Cities Conference,
February 2018.
Williams K, Pardini A, Felekis A, et al. (2016) Potential captive power/off-grid power game changer.
Webber Wentzel, Opinion Piece, 15 December.
Yelland C (2015) Domestic electricity prices of six metros and Eskom compared. EE Publishers,
25 May.

Lucy Baker is a senior research fellow at the Science Policy Research Unit of the University
of Sussex and a visiting fellow at the Energy Research Centre, University of Cape Town.
Lucy’s areas of research include the political economy of energy; socio-technical transitions;
and low carbon development in low- and middle-income countries.

Jon Phillips is a research fellow in the Department of Geography at the University of Exeter
and a visiting research fellow at King’s College London. His research interests are in envi-
ronment-society relations, including energy, climate and resource politics in sub-
Saharan Africa.