Overview : Transition to a green economy without green technologies and technological innovation requires a conducive enabling environment for these technologies to fulfil their intended role. The enabling relates to deficient or absent services, systems, tools or mechanisms, or barriers that are prohibitive or serve as contrary determinants for the uptake of green technology. These enablers for green technology are required to ultimately create new green jobs and being economically and socially transformative. For the purpose of PAGE, the prioritized green technology-needy sectors are water and energy, principally because these two resources are key, inter-dependent drivers of the South African economy. There remains substantial scope to accelerate uptake of energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies. In addition, South Africa being a water scarce country, saw in the recent past, large scale droughts. Dam levels in South Africa, and major dams in neighbouring countries that feed the South African economy are at their lowest levels yet, emphasizing need for green technology solutions in the water sector. Paramount to the challenge of energy and water security in the South African economy is ‘derisking’ green technology investments by ensuring an evidence-based enabling environment. Hence, determining the actual needs and costs of the green technology enabling environment will provide a more realistic assessment and implementation of green technology. The scope of work of the Consultant(s) is to undertake a study covering 2-4 case studies associated with green technology in the water and energy sectors, that will achieve the following: Assist in the determination of actual project costs and green technological interventions during design of water and energy infrastructure projects; Provide a metric or a numerical benchmark factor on enabling environment costs; and
Generate valuable lessons learned and policy-orientated recommendations that could inform, inter alia, TNA processes and future project design costs. |