Marius Pieterse

I participated today in this roundtable on energy security and resource governance, hosted by the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung at their Johannesburg offices. Other participants included academics from Wits and NWU, researchers at the CSIR, KAS staff and policy researchers in local government. Topics included the convoluted accountability structures around energy provision in South Africa, the role of local government in energy reticulation, ESKOM’s unbundling and the necessary and inevitable shift to renewable energy sources in South Africa. While energy law is not my forte, it was good to think through cities’ role in this context, especially in relation to how their dependence on service charge revenue might be inhibiting necessary transformation in the sector.