This Briefing Note sets out South Africa’s emerging domestic climate mitigation policy architecture in detail, focusing on its application to the all-important power sector. We argue that the country’s main mitigation instruments are likely to be limited in their effect on the power sector for the near future, with energy policy, regulation and power sector structure – all notoriously path dependent and subject to inertia – dominating mitigation outcomes. Whilst the climate policy instruments provide a solid base for monitoring and measuring power sector decarbonisation, they will therefore need to be complemented by additional measures in the short term to enable the power sector to play a leading role in a just transition to a net zero economy and society in South Africa.
