Engineering News reports that the SA Wind Energy Association (Sawea) has defended the industry’s job creation potential.  

This was ahead of a march by the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) and the National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa), which took place on Saturday to protest potential job losses in the coal-fired power generation sector as a result of SA’s plans to increase its use of renewable energy sources.  The Department of Energy (DoE) recently indicated that the renewable energy sector was currently four times more employment-intensive than the country’s coal and nuclear sectors.  “During construction thus far, employment for 30,405 job years has been created by the country’s renewable energy sector as a whole, with the wind industry contributing about one-third of these jobs,” explained Sawea CEO Brenda Martin.  The industry body was transparent about the fact that the lion’s share of employment opportunities were created within the construction phase, with a timeframe of typically two years per project.  But it pointed out that, while the power plant operations phase offered fewer employment opportunities, they did add up.  “The full portfolio of 36 preferred bidder wind projects, procured to date, are expected to generate 32,138 job years, over their 20-year operational period,” Martin noted.  Yet, Sawea warned that the energy transition in SA needed to be managed with much more care by all social partners.

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