Projects
Exploring critical leverage points to unlock economy-wide decarbonisation pathways in South Africa (2021 – present)
This project situates the wealth of decarbonisation analysis and modelling exercises undertaken in South Africa within a multi-disciplinary and social systems perspective, to tease out and communicate the critical milestones and decision points of positive, credible socio-economic decarbonisation pathways to 2050 for the country. The project’s emphasis is on identifying and demonstrating ways in which, from the current starting point, the country can retain optionality and create resilience in the face of rapid change and uncertainty to thrive in a net zero future. ...
Assessing green hydrogen value chain opportunities in South Africa (2021 – present)
Meridian has an ongoing stream of work in the green hydrogen space in South Africa from an analytical and advisory perspective. The team was recently appointed alongside the CSIR to provide advisory support to KfW to assess the status of South Africa’s green hydrogen market and identify high-impact green hydrogen project opportunities as well as their financing, technical and developmental needs with the aim of catalysing green hydrogen sector development in the country. ...
Eskom Debt Advisory Group (2021)
Building on two years of work conceiving and incubating a climate finance intervention to support South Africa’s just energy transition with a particular focus on addressing Eskom’s financial crisis, Meridian continued to articulate and elaborate both the problem statement and the role of climate finance in responding to it through this African Climate Foundation funded project. The key output of the project was a paper delivering a detailed plan to contribute to resolving Eskom’s debt crisis through the use of concessional climate finance – the ‘Just Transition Transaction: A Developing Country Coal Power Retirement Mechanism’. The project also supported extensive ...
Exploring a net zero emissions pathway for the South African power sector (2021 – present)
Funded by Agora Energiewende, Meridian is undertaking a power system modelling project in collaboration with the CSIR, which aims to provide an evidence base including quantitative investment costs and short-to-medium term critical interventions for South Africa’s policy makers to facilitate a ‘net zero’ power system transition. ...
South African power sector market and regulatory reform (2019 – present)
Meridian’s ongoing stream of work in this area involves the provision of advisory inputs and analysis into the policy and regulatory decision-making arena around the need for power sector regulatory reform and market development. Foci of this project include the need for rational decision-making related to energy sector investments, and to encourage diversity and competition in South Africa’s power market. ...
Analysing and incubating climate finance opportunities to support South African power sector reform (2019 – present)
Meridian continues to provide thought leadership in the climate and transition finance space, both domestically and internationally. A key focus area of this project is to elaborate how concessional climate and transition finance can be used most effectively in South Africa’s just energy transition, in particular to leverage the scale of commercial finance ultimately required to facilitate this transition and provide targeted support to those components which are not likely to be commercially financed. ...
Exploring the cost of increased mitigation ambition in the South African power sector (2019 – 2020)
Funded by Agora Energiewende, Meridian undertook a power system modelling project in collaboration with the CSIR, to explore the cost of additional mitigation in the South African power sector. Linked to this project, Meridian investigated the practical barriers to implementing an accelerated renewable energy rollout as required by the most ambitious power system decarbonisation scenarios. A key project finding was that future power system scenarios with substantially greater renewables contributions are not significantly more expensive than a least cost scenario. ...
Independent financial analysis of Eskom and the options for its reform
The project aims to develop analytical capacity to investigate the medium to longer term implications of changes to the underlying sector fundamentals and the threats to Eskom's business model. It also aims to identify gaps in the public discourse relating to the financial aspects of the current Eskom crises and options for reform. ...
The South African Energy Transition
The overall aim of the project is to undertake analysis and engage in stakeholder and media engagements to contribute to the public discourse on the energy transition in South Africa. This will further support policy and regulatory decisions that accelerate this process. ...
Prepare submission to NERSA tariff hearing
Our client is a shareholder in the ROMPCO pipeline that brings natural gas from Mozambique to South Africa. Our client required […] ...