Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) 2024 Update — Revised Electricity Mix
Theme: Energy planning
Assessment
Responsible: Department of Mineral Resources and Energy
Feasibility Assessment
Significant progress: REIPPP Bid Window 7 awarded 3,940 MW of renewable energy projects (wind, solar PV, and battery storage) in 2025, with financial close expected 2026. The 300+ days without load-shedding indicates that private embedded generation combined with EskomEskom: South Africa's national electricity utility and dominant power producer, transmitter, and distributor. Eskom's debt crisis and maintenance failures have been a primary cause of load shedding and a binding constraint on economic growth.'s EAF recovery has stabilised supply ahead of formal IRP procurement timelines. IRP 2024 remains under NERSANERSA — National Energy Regulator of South Africa: The regulatory authority for the electricity, piped-gas, and petroleum pipelines industries in South Africa. NERSA approves Eskom's tariff applications and licenses new electricity generators. review. Key risk: transmission grid capacity must expand to absorb BW7 projects — the NTCSA capitalisation programme is on the critical path. The end of load-shedding does not reduce the urgency of the IRP investment programme; it creates the window to build the energy system SA needs rather than the emergency generation it required.
Stakeholder Landscape
Who backs this reform, who needs convincing, and which interests or red lines shape political feasibility.
Backers
18
2 stakeholders
Negotiation weight
22
3 conditional actors
Opposition weight
0
0 opposing actors
Review coverage
0/5
All mapped stance notes are still draft
Provenance warning
Every mapped stakeholder stance for this idea is still draft. The coalition score is directional only until at least the high-influence actors are reviewed.
Coalition Read
Anchor: Presidency / Operation Vulindlela. Highest-leverage swing actor: Eskom.
Political Tractability
No reviewed signals · 0% of mapped influence has been reviewed.
The IRP 2024 update is a cross-departmental coordination priority for Operation Vulindlela.
Interest: Cross-cutting structural reform coordination across energy, logistics, water, digital infrastructure, and visa reform. Operation Vulindlela, establish…
Concern: Implementation bottlenecks within line departments; regulatory capture of NERSA and ICASA; SOE institutional inertia; ensuring quick wins translate in…
Engagement path: Already fully engaged. Seeks line department buy-in, NEDLAC social compact legitimacy, and international DFI financing alignment on key reform milesto…
BUSA supports the IRP 2024 update for regulatory certainty on the generation mix underpinning energy investment decisions.
Interest: Cross-sector structural reform across energy security, logistics efficiency, regulatory certainty, labour market flexibility, and digital infrastructu…
Concern: Slow implementation pace relative to policy announcements; inconsistency between reform rhetoric and regulatory decisions (e.g. NERSA tariff approvals…
Engagement path: Already actively engaged. Seeks implementation accountability mechanisms with published milestones, predictable regulatory timelines, and NEDLAC outco…
Eskom supports the IRP update but advocates for a generation mix that preserves baseload capacity during the transition.
Interest: Managing R400bn+ debt restructuring with government support; maintaining grid stability during the unbundling transition; preserving technical and ins…
Concern: Unbundling of the distribution arm (EDI) could fragment operational coherence and create regulatory gaps; transmission entity capitalisation requires…
Engagement path: Credible debt restructuring plan with government guarantees; adequate transition period for unbundling with clear milestones; grid investment ring-fen…
NUM supports the IRP update only if the coal phase-down timeline matches just transition fund disbursement to affected communities.
Interest: Mining employment security and worker safety; just transition pace that protects coal-dependent community livelihoods; collective bargaining rights in…
Concern: Accelerated coal phase-out without adequate income support, skills retraining, and community economic diversification; renewable energy job quality —…
Engagement path: Just transition fund with dedicated skills retraining and income support; coal community economic diversification plans with government commitments an…
NERSA supports the IRP update but insists its tariff methodology must be respected in any revised electricity mix.
Interest: Statutory mandate as National Energy Regulator: licensing, tariff regulation for electricity, gas, and petroleum pipelines; consumer price protection…
Concern: Reform proposals that bypass NERSA licensing (e.g. registration-only frameworks for embedded generation) reduce statutory jurisdiction and create regu…
Engagement path: Regulatory reform must strengthen rather than hollow out NERSA's capacity; adequate resources and staff to handle an expanded regulatory workload unde…
Description
The IRP 2024 Update revises South Africa's long-term electricity generation mix, superseding the IRP 2019. It integrates sharply lower renewable energy costs, revised demand projections reflecting load-shedding's suppressive effect on growth, and accelerated coal retirement timelines aligned with Just Energy Transition commitments. The plan sets procurement targets for wind, solar PV, storage, and gas peakers through 2030 and beyond. South Africa's energy security and decarbonisation trajectory depend critically on this roadmap — investors, municipalities, and the NTCSA require IRP certainty to plan grid investments. As of early 2026, the draft IRP remains under public commentPublic Comment: A formal process allowing citizens and organisations to submit written responses to proposed laws, regulations, or policies published in the Government Gazette. Public comment periods typically run 30–60 days., delayed partly by political contestation over coal phase-down timelines in Mpumalanga. Finalisation would unlock private generation investment and provide NERSA with a regulatory framework for new capacity licensing.
Referenced in OECD Economic Surveys: South Africa
OECD SA Survey (2017, 2020, 2022, 2025). Consistently recommended as key structural reform; the 2025 survey estimates pro-competition reforms including energy could add ~4.5pp to GDP over 10 years.
Every month of delay in gazetting the IRP 2024 represents at least R2 billion in deferred private energy investment—the cost of regulatory uncertainty in capital-intensive infrastructure sectors. — Energy Council of South Africa, Q1 2025
Implementation Roadmap
The IRP 2024 update revises South Africa's long-term electricity mix to integrate accelerated renewable energy procurement, a revised coal decommissioning schedule aligned with Eskom's generation fleet condition assessments, and a confirmed 2,500 MW nuclear new-build allocation. The DMRE leads the process in consultation with NERSA, National Treasury, and Eskom, with a statutory public participation process required under the Electricity Regulation Act. An updated load forecast is the critical input — the IRP 2019 overestimated industrial demand — and revised projections must account for embedded generation growth, efficiency gains, and structural economic shifts. The IRP underpins all subsequent REIPPPP procurement decisions and should be gazetted no later than Q3 2025 to unblock Rounds 7–9.
Commission updated demand forecast study incorporating embedded generation uptake, industrial efficiency trends, and economic growth scenarios; peer-review by CSIR Energy Centre
Publish IRP 2024 draft for public comment in the Government Gazette with a 60-day comment period; convene regional public hearings in all nine provinces
Integrate comments and revise draft; obtain Cabinet approval at the Economic Cluster Cabinet committee
International Comparisons
View all →Morocco's Noor concentrated solar power complex at Ouarzazate — 580 MW, world's largest CSP plant — was commissioned 2016–2018 with 8 hours of molten-salt thermal storage enabling night-time generation. Morocco targets 52% renewable electricity by 2030. World Bank and AfDB concessional finance blended with private equity reduced Morocco's energy import bill by USD 1 billion annually. SA's high solar irradiance and similar import dependency make this public-finance-plus-private-investment model directly applicable.
Approach
Morocco put a single state agency, MASEN, between the plant and the utility. MASEN assembled the site, water rights, grid connection and permits before going to market, then tendered each phase as a build-own-operate contract with a long-term power purchase agreement, so bidders priced construction and operation rather than development risk. Concessional loans and climate funds were blended with commercial equity to bring the contracted tariff down, and the state absorbed the gap between that tariff and what the national utility could pay. The complex was built in phases, with molten-salt storage designed in from the start so output extended past sunset.
Timeline: Dedicated agency established 2010, first phase commissioned 2016 and the complex completed by 2018; roughly five years from procurement design to a first operating plant
Lessons for South Africa
The IRP's hardest choice is not the megawatt split but who carries the risk on dispatchable low-carbon capacity, and Morocco's answer was an explicit, budgeted state subsidy channelled through one agency rather than a tariff argument at the regulator. Two things transfer. Storage should be procured as a service the plan specifies, as Noor's molten salt was, rather than left to be retrofitted once the renewable share bites. And developer risk was cut by the state doing site, water and grid work up front — directly relevant to an IRP whose wind and solar procurement targets currently assume grid connection that does not yet exist.
Evidence & Research
Research corpus →- Faster than you think: Renewable energy and developing countries
SA-TIED
The paper analyses the paradigm shift from cost declines in renewable energy (solar and wind) and the systems integration challenges of variable renewables at high penetration — the exact mechanisms and constraints the IRP 2024 Update must address in revising South Africa's electricity generation m…
- Unlocking sustainable and inclusive growth in South Africa: Advancing the electricity reform agenda
ERSA · Dec 2025
The paper examines electricity reform, energy security, renewable deployment acceleration, and just energy transition — the core mechanisms and objectives of the IRP 2024 Update — and discusses how these reforms stimulate growth and address load-shedding's economic impact.
- South Africa: 2024 Article IV Consultation-Press Release; Staff Report; and Statement by the Executive Director for South Africa
IMF · Jan 2025
The IMF Article IV Consultation directly addresses electricity reforms as a critical constraint on South Africa's growth trajectory and explicitly endorses accelerated renewable energy rollout to meet climate goals, providing macroeconomic context and international validation for the IRP 2024's ren…
- The labour market effects of South Africa’s electricity crisis
UNU-WIDER · Jan 2026
The paper quantifies load-shedding's suppressive effect on employment and growth, which directly supports the IRP 2024's revised demand projections that reflect load-shedding's impact on economic activity and electricity demand forecasting.
Parliamentary record
4 meetingsCommittee sittings this reform was drawn from, most recent first. Each row opens the meeting on this site; the PMG link goes to the source record.
How to cite
Wilse-Samson, L. (2026). Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) 2024 Update — Revised Electricity Mix. SA Policy Space. Retrieved 24 August 2026, from https://sa-policy-space.vercel.app/ideas/integrated-resource-plan-irp-2024-update-revised-electricity-mix?snapshot=2026-08-24
Status History
tracked since Mar 2026- Recorded as Under review when status tracking began — held since at least Mar 2026.Mar 2026
Data as of 2026-08-24 · latest PMG meeting 2026-08-21