A new report published by Trade and Industrial Policies Strategies (TIPS) has indicated that research gaps must be addressed to better establish employment numbers and characteristics, including the quality of jobs, in the venture capital firms supplying the renewable energy industries in South Africa.

The report – ‘The state of research on renewable energy value chains in South Africa: Firms and employment characteristics – outlines challenges, such as inconsistent employment measures and methods, including differing uses and applications of job metrics.

It states that developing better data on firms and employment in the renewables value chains will require a number of strategic partnerships, budget allocations and industry and intermediary organisations’ willingness to provide information on employment in a consistent format.

The report highlights that opportunities for deepening employment research exist in several areas.

This includes that Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) could be a partner to disaggregate the industry survey of electricity generation, which is conducted every three years.

This could be done by technology and by installed capacity. It would then be possible to provide a sense of jobs in operation across the technologies and per installed megawatt. As more generators come online, this could be a useful data source for operational jobs, the report posits.

It also proposes that Stats SA provide disaggregated data in its Supply-Use Tables for electricity industry procurement by technology.

This would provide a quality source of data, produced yearly, on the goods and services used by the different electricity generation technologies, including the value of this procurement as part of a wider system of national accounts, the report avers. 

Another option suggested is that a joint project with the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy’s Independent Power Producer (IPP) Office and the main investors; developers; engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) companies and original-equipment manufacturers (OEMs) could be established to better measure and report on Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme projects’ employment impacts.

OEMs and EPC firms could be required to specify where they procure their inputs, particularly the main components. Making the IPP Office datasets open source would also assist greatly with generating insights, the report asserts.

The report indicates that, owing to the growth in the small-scale embedded generation (SSEG) market, and the more than 300 installation companies listed on the PV GreenCard website alone, a routine survey could assess these installers’ employment levels, skills requirements and where they source componentry (that is, their supplying firms).

It says this could draw on the PV GreenCard database, as well as records from local government.

The National Energy Regulator of South Africa has a licensing and registration database of large private projects. The report postulates that access to data on these project developers could allow for a survey that similarly establishes patterns of sourcing of goods and services into the distributed energy market, outside of the SSEG.

To better understand and measure subcomponent manufacturers and material suppliers and their employment, existing industry surveys and data could be expanded with additional questions to establish where supply takes place to renewables industries, the report suggests.

It notes that this would allow for a better understanding of the share of demand from renewable energy for products and how this does or does not stimulate employment creation or job retention in materials and manufacturing firms.

More generally, as new routine data sources for renewables industries are developed and improved, the measures for employment data generation must be standardised, the report emphasises.

The South African Renewable Energy Masterplan is expected to be finalised and implemented over the upcoming months and, as this happens, there will be opportunities to discuss these data and insights requirements, TIPS states.

The report notes that better data is needed to ensure that industrial development support is appropriately aligned to industry conditions and potential and, with that, supports decent work creation.