Mining company Anglo American and EDF Renewables have partnered to form a new jointly owned company, Envusa Energy, to develop renewables projects in South Africa.
As a first phase for the newly formed entity, a mature pipeline of more than 600MW of solar and wind projects has been launched.
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Envusa Energy’s first phase is expected to be fully funded – including debt financing – and ready to begin construction in 2023.
The development of renewables is expected to generate between 3-5GW of renewable energy by the end of the decade in South Africa, which introduced a raft of measures earlier this year to bolster renewables deployment.
Envusa is expected to supply London-headquartered Anglo American with renewable electricity generated on the miner’s sites as well as with renewable energy transmitted via the national grid.
For EDF Renewables this partnership will be added to the almost 1GW it is currently building or operating in South Africa by 2023, according to Tristan de Drouas, CEO at EDF Renewables in South Africa.
“Together, these projects further EDF Group’s CAP 2030 strategy, which aims to double our net renewable installed energy capacity worldwide (hydropower included) from 28GW in 2015 to 60GW by 2030,” said de Drouas.
Both companies signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) in March 2022 to explore the development of renewables designed to meet the mining company’s power needs in South Africa.
Moreover, the projects will serve as a clean energy source for the production of green hydrogen to supply the mining company’s fleet of mine haul trucks powered by hydrogen.