Is JETP the savior of South Africa - or is it about to make the embattled country’s problems worse?

JETP is a multi-year project to assist South Africa with decarbonisation, with the support of governments around the world, including France, the Netherlands, Germany, the UK, and the European Union, also known as the International Partners Group (IPG).

- JACK WOLF, OLIVER STALLWOOD AND SAKHILE DUBE

However, just four years after its announcement JETP is under heavy scrutiny, experts say the groundbreaking multi-billion-dollar scheme to decarbonise South Africa is now under threat of collapse, against a backdrop of a local economy addicted to coal, skyrocketing coal imports to the EU, claims of modern colonisation, concerns over transparency, and crumbling support.

Europe’s decision to dramatically increase coal imports from South Africa - just months after announcing the JETP plan - raises doubts about how serious they really are about helping the country move away from coal.

On the surface, JETP looks like a way to transition South Africa toward cleaner energy, but when you take a closer look, it's unclear who will actually benefit and whether there’s a real long-term strategy in place.

Celine Tan, who is a professor of International Economic Law and co-director of the Centre for Law, Regulation and Governance of the Global Economy, has spent almost a year leading an investigation into the financing of energy transitions in developing countries. Tan says that JETP in South Africa has been ‘rushed’ and is ‘politically expedient.

“(JETP] is so ambitious but it has not really been thought through - we have heard from partners it has been very chaotically done” Celine said that her research had thrown up a multitude of issues, from an apparent lack of reskilling and relocating workers to a lack of assessment on energy needs, to disruption from new green energy systems such as dams or hydrogen plants, to the type of financing - the list goes on.

“The quality of financing is suspect,” she says. “A lot of it is debt-based and loans. When we looked into types of financing, there were a lot of guarantees, blended finance, and pledges to go into joint ventures.”