Supporting informed decision-making starts with a shared evidence base.
PAGE is supporting a synthesis of South Africa’s carbon-intensive energy sector, examining its economic significance, policy landscape and labour market implications. The analysis will inform a broader assessment of the socioeconomic impacts of a coal phase-down, helping strengthen national social dialogue and future policy discussions.
Rather than prescribing solutions, this work provides stakeholders with a clearer understanding of the opportunities and challenges associated with the transition, including its implications for workers, coal-dependent regions and local economies.
This analysis has now been published as a synthesis report on South Africa’s carbon-intensive energy sector, developed with the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). The report sets out the transition’s starting point — showing how three quarters of electricity generation, some 100,000 mining jobs largely concentrated in Mpumalanga, and R150–180 billion a year in export revenue still rest on the sector — and identifies key actions in response: coordinating national, provincial, and local transition plans, aligning mandates across government departments, and launching re-skilling programmes well ahead of closures.
PAGE is also supporting analysis on opportunities to unlock climate finance for South Africa’s just energy transition. The study examines financial instruments, governance arrangements and institutional conditions that can help mobilize investment while supporting equitable transition outcomes, strengthening the evidence available for discussions on financing the transition. Importantly, the analysis can also strengthen social dialogue by providing a shared evidence base for government, business, labour and civil society to engage on the distribution of transition costs and benefits, the design of financing mechanisms, and the institutional arrangements required to ensure that climate finance contributes to inclusive and just transition outcomes.
The findings are available in Opportunities for Unlocking Finance for South Africa’s Just Energy Transition and Implications for Social Dialogue. The study estimates that implementing South Africa’s climate commitments will require some R535 billion per year by 2030, well above current climate finance flows, and finds that fragmented governance and thin project pipelines, more than a shortage of capital, are the binding constraints. In response, it prioritizes actions ranging from strengthening climate finance governance and expanding concessional and blended finance to making social dialogue a cornerstone of transition finance itself.
