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Spatial processes and politics of renewable energy transition: Land, zones and frictions in South Africa

January 2017
Political Geography 56:1-12

DOI:10.1016/j.polgeo.2016.10.001

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This paper seeks to make a contribution to on-going debates about how to conceptualise the spatial processes of renewable energy transition. It makes a case for understanding renewable energy transitions as simultaneously spatial and political processes, constitutive of new territories and configuring development pathways. Drawing on a case study of South Africa's Renewable Energy Independent Power Procurement Programme (REI4P), the paper explores the ways in which energy transitions are intrinsically bound up with both the materiality and the historical and contemporary politics of land. It then examines the relationship between energy transitions and territory to conceptualise the ways in which transitions take on an experimental shape in the form of 'zones'. The paper argues that these zones are new territories deploying forms of spatial and political-administrative exceptionality, which allow political and economic actors to exercise authority and commercial power. Two types of zone emerging from South Africa's energy transition exemplify these processes: legally-defined zones for the development of solar and wind energy and zones of socioeconomic development required by REI4P. The paper explores the spatial and political consequences of these strategies and suggests that these may not necessarily translate into conflict and confrontation, but instead produce uneasy co-existences of different political, social and spatial projects and interests, with potential to create new polities.

Insolation (solar irradiation) in South Africa.

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Proposed REDZs and preliminary EGI corridors (source: adapted from Cape-Ducluzeau and van der Westhuizen 2015).

…

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Available via license: CC BY 4.0

Content may be subject to copyright.

Spatial processes and politics of renewable energy transition: Land,

zones and frictions in South Africa

Cheryl McEwan

Department of Geography, Durham University, Lower Mountjoy, South Road, Durham DH1 3LE, United Kingdom

article info

Article history:

Received 25 August 2015

Received in revised form

7 October 2016

Accepted 8 October 2016

Keywords:

Renewable energy

South Africa

Zone

Territory

Land

Energy transition

abstract

This paper seeks to make a contribution to on-going debates about how to conceptualise the spatial

processes of renewable energy transition. It makes a case for understanding renewable energy transi-

tions as simultaneously spatial and political processes, constitutive of new territories and conﬁguring

development pathways. Drawing on a case study of South Africa's Renewable Energy Independent Power

Procurement Programme (REI4P), the paper explores the ways in which energy transitions are intrin-

sically bound up with both the materiality and the historical and contemporary politics of land. It then

examines the relationship between energy transitions and territory to conceptualise the ways in which

transitions take on an experimental shape in the form of 'zones'. The paper argues that these zones are

new territories deploying forms of spatial and political-administrative exceptionality, which allow po-

litical and economic actors to exercise authority and commercial power. Two types of zone emerging

from South Africa's energy transition exemplify these processes: legally-deﬁned zones for the devel-

opment of solar and wind energy and zones of socioeconomic development required by REI4P. The paper

explores the spatial and political consequences of these strategies and suggests that these may not

necessarily translate into conﬂict and confrontation, but instead produce uneasy co-existences of

different political, social and spatial projects and interests, with potential to create new polities.

license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

1. Introduction

There is a long and rich history of engagement by geographers

with energy (see Calvert, 2015), but until recently, the importance

of geographical approaches to understanding renewable energy

transitions has been largely neglected. As Shove and Walker (2014)

argue, energy policy, engineering and material science tends to

focus on methods for either meeting demand more efﬁciently or for

reducing CO

emissions, while social scientists tend to focus on

questions about the politics of access, provision and supply. There

have been basic analyses of some of the geographical dimensions of

contemporary energy challenges at different scales (global,

regional, urban, household); geographers have also used the

concept of ‘energy landscape’to analyse how different modes of

energy production, distribution and use underpin material re-

lations, such as landscape form and livelihoods (Calvert, 2015;

Nadai &Van der Horst, 2010). However, debates about renewable

energy transitions have tended to focus on the temporal di-

mensions of ‘transition’and to neglect “the way in which spatial

processes shape energy systems and inﬂuence their capacity for

transformation”(Bridge, Bouzarovski, Bradshaw, &Eyre, 2013,p.

332). Bridge et al. call for interventions that seek to examine the

spatial organisation and governance of new energy systems, and to

generate new ways of thinking about energy transition as a

spatially-constituted process “involving the reconﬁguration of

current patterns and scales of economic and social activity”(2013:

231). As Huber (2015: 27) argues, understanding renewable energy

transitions “will also require new spatialities and new spatial

imaginations.”

In response, this paper seeks to make a contribution to on-going

debates about how to conceptualise the spatial processes of

renewable energy transition, while also making a case for under-

standing renewable energy transitions as simultaneously spatial

and political processes. Timothy Mitchell (2011) has illustrated how

the material properties of carbon fuels revolutionised ﬁrst western

and then global polities. Due to its bulk and dependency on labour

to move it, coal gave working-class people and labour unions new

power, acting as a catalyst for democracy and progress. The ﬂuid

properties of oil allowed elites to regain control over energy sup-

plies, devise systems through which to maximise proﬁts and reduce

E-mail address: Cheryl.mcewan@durham.ac.uk.

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Political Geography

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/polgeo

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2016.10.001

Political Geography 56 (2017) 1e12

vulnerability to democratic pressures. Oil also made it possible for

the ﬁrst time in history to reorganize political life around the

management of ‘the economy’and the promise of its inﬁnite

growth. The global ramiﬁcations of renewable energy transitions

are beyond the scope of this paper, but it makes a case for exam-

ining the ways in which such transitions are already constitutive of

new territories and polities in particular locations. Speciﬁcally, the

paper ﬁrst explores the importance of acknowledging the ways in

which energy transitions are intrinsically bound up with both the

materiality and the historical and contemporary politics of land.

Second, it develops the notion of energy transitions as a form of

territoriality (Bridge et al. 2013) to conceptualise the ways in which

they take on an experimental shape, deploying forms of spatial and

political-administrative exceptionality e‘zones’ethat allow po-

litical and economic actors to exercise authority and commercial

power. Third, it explores the unintended spatial and political con-

sequences of these strategies, reﬂecting on the kinds of polities that

are emerging and could emerge within these spaces.

The paper develops these ideas through an exploration of South

Africa's renewable energy transition, which has proposed around

600 renewable energy projects, both grid and off-grid and ranging

from utility-scale to household-level systems, in the absence of a

consolidated strategic spatial plan (Cape-Ducluzeau and van der

Westhuizen, 2015). Yet, as this paper argues, spatial processes are

shaping the emerging energy transition and their consequences are

likely to be dramatic. The South African government has recently

committed to a strategy for electricity generation until 2030 that

makes provision for a diverse energy mix. As part of this, in 2011 it

launched the Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer

Procurement Programme (REI4P), a public-private partnership that

provides impetus to a low-carbon energy transition. This is an

ambitious programme that attempts to ensure renewable energy

capacity is fully developed while mediating the competing

powerful interests involved and ensuring that some of the proﬁts

are retained in South Africa. To date, REI4P has procured approxi-

mately 5041 megawatts (MW) of renewable energy in four bidding

rounds at costs increasingly competitive with coal-ﬁred electricity

by mobilising over R168 billion (£8.57 billion)

of investment,

largely from the private sector (Papapetrou, 2014). South Africa has

thus secured more investment for more independent power gen-

eration than has been achieved across the entire African continent

over the past 20 years and, since 2012, has ranked among the top

ten countries globally in renewable energy Independent Power

Producer (IPP) investments (Eberhard, Kolker, &Leigland, 2014).

The scale remains relatively modest when gauged against planned

procurement from other energy sources (7400MW from new coal-

ﬁred, gas-ﬁred and hydro-electricity generation; 9600MW from a

nuclear-build programme; 15,000MW from the Grand Inga Hydro-

electricity Partnership in the Democratic Republic of Congo).

However, the commitment to sourcing over 40% of new elec-

tricity generation from renewable sources by 2030 represents a

considerable policy shift that positions South Africa as a leading

player in utility-scale wind and solar power generation, and in

which the REI4P is a signiﬁcant driver.

While it is too early to assess the success of REI4P, this paper

examines the ways in which it is already remaking territory,

creating new polities, and producing new scalar relationships

within and beyond South Africa. It draws on research conducted

between 2012 and 2014, including six weeks of ﬁeldwork in the

Northern and Western Cape provinces. Thirty-six interviews were

conducted with key informants including: two local government

ofﬁcials and three Community Programme Managers involved in

renewable energy in both provinces; CEOs in three sustainable

energy companies; three independent sustainability consultants;

twenty-one individual off-grid energy consumers in ﬁve different

locations in both provinces, and; six sustainable development

professionals. The paper also draws on document analysis of gov-

ernment renewable energy policies, industry and government

press releases, and other reports on South Africa's renewable en-

ergy roll-out. The ﬁrst section of the paper makes a case for the

importance of situating REI4P within histories and politics of en-

ergy and land, focusing speciﬁcally on the simultaneous re-valuing

and discursive occlusion of land within South African renewable

energy policy and debate. The second section of the paper uses the

concept of ‘the zone’to examine new territories emerging from and

shaping the renewable energy transition. The ﬁrst are zones that

have been identiﬁed as optimal for the location of wind and solar

energy projects, and in which business is being made easier for

international investors in renewable energy. The second are zones

for development surrounding individual renewable energy pro-

jects, which are spatially deﬁned by procurement rules and in

which IPPs are required to deliver socio-economic beneﬁts to the

local ‘community’. Drawing on Easterling (2014a:1e2), the paper

argues that these two zones are “meta-infrastructures”adminis-

tered by public and private actors and creating “de facto, unde-

clared forms of polity”. They are spaces in which “extrastatecraft”e

activity that is both outside of and in addition to statecraft eis

performed, and in which state and private sector forces have

attained “power and administrative authority necessary to under-

take the building of infrastructure”(ibid.: 2). A critical question in

the context of South Africa is whether or not these two different

zones are also spaces in which a just energy transition (Newell &

Mulvaney, 2013) can occur. Inspired by Tsing's (2005) notion of

“zones of awkward engagement”, the paper suggests that within

these zones global investors and speculators, national and local

government discourses of development, and the autonomy and

desires of the poorest in society exist together in a state of friction.

The paper explores the possibilities for the emergence of new

polities out of these frictions and reﬂects on their likely outcomes.

Finally, it draws some tentative conclusions about the broader

signiﬁcance of understanding renewable energy transitions as

simultaneously spatial and political processes.

2. Renewable energy transition and the politics of land

Approximately 96% of South Africa's electricity is generated by

Eskom, the largest energy producer in Africa (Baker, Newell, &

Phillips, 2014); 93% of Eskom's generation is coal-powered (Tyler,

Boyd, Coetzee, &Winkler, 2011). South Africa's minerals-energy

complex (Fine &Rustomjee, 1996)ea regime of accumulation

that has its origins in apartheid econtinues to exert enormous

inﬂuence over the country's energy sector (Swilling &Anneke,

2012). However, South Africa is experiencing an on-going energy

crisis, shifting from historic over-capacity fuelled by cheap do-

mestic coal for commercial and industrial use under apartheid, to

rising demand and falling reserves fuelled by economic growth and

post-apartheid grid expansion. The crisis has been exacerbated by

lack of infrastructure investment, fuelled in large part by uncer-

tainty within government strategic planning. In the late 1990s, the

government drew up plans to partially privatise Eskom, including

divesting 30% of production capacity, outsourcing functions,

creating independent regional distributors and fully corporatising

Currency conversions are based on July 2015 rates. The Rand has fallen steadily

against major global currencies since 2011, when £168 billion would have equated

to £14 billion.

These ﬁgures were conﬁrmed in the 2015 State of the Nation Address (see

http://www.gov.za/president-jacob-zuma-state-nation-address-2015, accessed 12/

6/15).

C. McEwan / Political Geography 56 (2017) 1e122

Eskom. These plans stalled in 2003. As McDonald (2009) argues,

some commentators saw this initially as a retreat from privatiza-

tion, but plans for private sector involvement have remained cen-

tral to government strategy. REI4P is one eventual outcome of this

commitment to liberalisation. In the meantime, government has

been forced to commit to massive infrastructure investment in

order to meet rising demand, with R385 billion (c. £20 billion)

invested in 2013, rising to over R1 trillion (c. £51 billion) by 2026 in

a planned doubling of capacity. Over the last decade, Eskom has

been struggling to build an additional 17,000MW of generation

capacity by 2018 amidst a funding crisis that has led to mainte-

nance backlogs and delays (Eskom, 2011, p. 61). Its response has

been expensive buyback agreements with industrial users paid not

to consume electricity, and ‘load-shedding’(rolling power-cuts)

and year-on-year tariff increases of 27.5% for domestic consumers.

This has been deeply unpopular, stoking suspicions of favourable

tariffs for corporations (Ngwane, 2008) not helped by a widely

perceived culture of secrecy within Eskom.

South Africa's minerals-energy complex is underpinned by an

economy that is structurally dependent upon energy intensive

growth, based on abundant sources of low-cost coal and the

exploitation of black labour (Baker et al. 2014). While the archi-

tecture of South Africa's political economy creates enduring struc-

tures of power between the ﬁnancial sector, parastatals,

government, and the private sector that underpin the minerals-

energy complex, a number of factors have made it increasingly

unsustainable (ibid.). These include: the ﬁnancialisation of South

Africa's resource conglomerates and liberalisation of capital ﬂows

resulting in capital ﬂight; the crisis of legitimacy brought about by

continued exploitation and oppression of black workers; and

increasing concerns about the environmental consequences of

carbon-intensive energy production. Consequently, the last decade

has witnessed a gradual policy shift towards investment in

renewable energy, marked by the 2003 White Paper on Renewable

Energy (DME, 2003), the 2008 Energy Act and the 2010 Integrated

Resource Plan (DoE, 2010a; 2011). At the 2009 Copenhagen climate

change summit, President Zuma pledged to reduce South Africa's

greenhouse gas emissions by 34% by 2020 and 44% by 2025 (Baker

et al. 2014), focusing attention on utilising the country's natural

assets. South Africa has a large area (around 194,000 km

, see Fig. 1)

of high radiation and the Northern Cape is one of the best solar

resource areas in the world (Edkins, Marquard, &Winkler, 2010).

Taking advantage of this requires large investments in infrastruc-

ture for both electricity production and transmission to the main

electricity consumer centres (Pegels, 2010). In 2011, the revised IRP

determined that 42% of new electricity generation capacity would

come from renewable sources emainly wind, solar photovoltaics

and concentrated solar power,

with some biomass and

geothermal generation eby 2030 (IRP, 2011). In order to meet in-

vestment requirements, 30% is being procured through the REI4P.

The government has thus taken the ﬁrst step in the liberalisation of

South Africa's energy market and promulgated the beginnings of a

renewable energy transition.

The drivers of this shift are likely to be signiﬁcant in determining

wider outcomes. First, REI4P is a response to the country's esca-

lating energy crisis since 2008 and an urgent need to produce

additional generation capacity to the grid. Wind and solar power

plants are the quickest to build (the government's enormous

investment in coal and nuclear power stations will take much

longer to come on stream). The second driver is the government's

adoption of the post-Rioþ20 ‘Green Economy’agenda, which sees

economic development as the principal force and outcome of in-

vestment in renewable energy, fuelled primarily by public and

private investments (Sukhdev, Stone, &Nuttall, 2010; UNEP, 2011).

REI4P signals the government's endorsement of this framework

despite criticism that it could produce new power relations of

inequality and injustice (Clemenceau, 2012; Death, 2014). The

renewable energy sector is seen as a key element in a ‘New Growth

Path’aimed at job creation which, given that South Africa has one of

the world's highest unemployment rates at 34% (StatSA, 2014),

remains a critical issue for government. The third driver is recog-

nition that South Africa, as the 12th highest carbon emitter in the

world (CAIT, 2012; IEIA, 2013; Rennkamp &Wlokas, 2012), needs to

diversify its energy mix in order to honour its international com-

mitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Therefore, although

REI4P is the outcome of considerable political will and desire to

promote a sustainable renewable energy industry delivering both

cost-effective energy and socio-economic beneﬁts (Papapetrou,

2014), poverty alleviation and inequality are not principal drivers.

Yet, as Baker et al. (2014: 793) argue, the government is aware that

“the production of energy has to enhance the employment pros-

pects”of the unemployed “while also addressing the issue of en-

ergy poverty”.

To date REI4P has awarded 77 projects to the private sector and

20-year Power Purchase Agreements are in place between Eskom

and IPPs. Round 1, completed in 2011, has procured twenty solar

parks and eight wind farms that have already started to come on

stream. Round 2, completed in 2012, has procured ten solar parks,

seven wind farms and two small hydro projects. Round 3,

completed in 2013, has procured eight solar parks, seven wind

farms, one biomass and one geothermal project. Round 4 was

delayed because Eskom was unable to provide transmission grid

access to the new projects, but was completed in April 2015, with

six solar PV projects, ﬁve onshore wind projects, one biomass and

one small hydro project. As Fig. 1 illustrates, a clear geography of

REI4P projects has emerged, with the majority of the solar projects

(including all Round 4 projects) located in the Northern Cape and

wind projects concentrated in the Western, Eastern and Northern

Cape Provinces. Northern Cape has 41 projects in total, Eastern

Cape 16 and Western Cape 9 (WWF, 2015). REI4P is lauded as a

successful model, for South Africa and internationally

(Montmasson-Clair &Ryan, 2014), of a watertight public-private

partnership and tendering process that is competitive and free

from corruption ewhat has been euphemistically termed ‘ten-

derpreneurialism’(Eberhard et al. 2014, p. 1). It remains to be seen,

however, if REI4P can deliver energy in ways that are more

economically and socially just than has been the case with South

Africa's traditional energy sector. Its spatial processes and out-

comes will play an important role in determining this; under-

standing these requires a conceptualisation of renewable energy

transition that acknowledges historical and contemporary politics

of land and how they give rise to new forms of territory epolitical

technologies comprising “techniques for measuring land and con-

trolling terrain”(Elden, 2010, p. 811).

REI4P requires bidders to procure land as sites for development

and to submit environmental impact assessments, but political

discourse concerning REI4P has until recently underplayed issues

of land ownership and value. The discursive erasure of land within

public debate about renewable energy is particularly notable given

that the South African land question is of great political sensitivity

and importance, and in which the minerals-energy complex is

historically embroiled (Freund, 2010). The Natives Land Act of 1913

dispossessed indigenous South Africans of 90% of the nation's land

Solar energy has greatest renewable resource potential in South Africa. It pro-

duces electricity either through concentrating solar power, which uses mirrors to

concentrate the sun's thermal energy and heat a transfer ﬂuid to produce steam

and drive turbines, or through solar photovoltaics, which uses primarily silicon

panels to convert solar radiation directly into electricity (Pegels, 2010).

C. McEwan / Political Geography 56 (2017) 1e12 3

and helped proletarianize a large proportion of the rural population

shortly after the discovery of minerals, providing a source of cheap

labour for extractive industries (Hall &Ntsebeza, 2007). Post-

apartheid governments have made land reform, restitution and

redistribution a priority in order to bring about socio-economic

redress, but the pace of change has been painfully slow. As Hall

and Ntsebeza argue, the land issue is “a complex one that encom-

passes the question of how land is accessed and used …and how

capital is accumulated”(ibid.: 4). Its role in alleviating structural

poverty and job creation is important for policy-makers, particu-

larly given the failure of neo-liberal macro-economic policy to

generate jobs in urban areas. South Africa's renewable energy

transition has particular implications for land use and proﬁtability,

as well as potential to further politicise land ownership. Land

capable of providing opportunities for generating renewable en-

ergy gains a “new source of potential value”(Bridge et al. 2013,p.

335) and such spaces are currently being targeted for commercial

development. These include the ﬂat, semi-arid landscapes of the

Northern Cape, which are preferred sites for solar power, and the

coastal and upland areas of the Western and Eastern Capes, which

are optimal for wind power. In other countries experiencing similar

energy transitions, the effects on land of renewable energy devel-

opment have “become a key arena in the debate on energy policy”

(Nadai &Van der Horst, 2010: 143), yet this has not been the case in

South Africa. Why this is so is likely down to three factors: the ef-

fects of government discourse, REI4P compliancy rules, and the

nature of land ownership in areas targeted for development.

The role of government discourse has been particularly notable

in the case of the development of solar energy in the Northern

Cape. An important speech by the then Minister of Energy at an

Investors Conference in 2010 is revealing for what it does and does

not say:

Diamonds that used to attract people to the Northern Cape have

been depleted. We are here to see how we can harvest the

diamond that is the sun in the sky …We are on the cusp of a

world-wide green revolution with a plethora of economic op-

portunities, particularly in solar energy, available to our country

…and this dry and dusty Northern Cape, which is one of the

poorest regions in South Africa, will become the centre of our

response. (DoE, 2010b: 12, 15).

The Minister went on to describe the Northern Cape as having

“excellent and consistent sun”and “ﬂat and sparsely-populated

land”, and she issued a “challenge [to] my colleagues in the

Northern Cape to make Upington one of the Solar Capitals of the

world.”The Northern Cape is thus newly constituted as an energy

resource at the same time as the government is establishing legal

and extra-legal mechanisms through which to create resource ac-

cess (Karplus &Meir, 2013). The province is discursively con-

structed as a resource frontier for the nascent South African market

in renewable energy and its second largest town eUpington, with a

population of less than 75,000 eas a potential centre of a global

energy revolution. Tsing (2000: 119) refers to this discourse as

Fig. 1. Insolation (solar irradiation) in South Africa.

C. McEwan / Political Geography 56 (2017) 1e124

globalist “conjuring”and “hegemonic world-making”, in which

claims are made on a global scale as a means for justifying the

rendering tangible on a region's landscape the aspirations of a

national elite. Government discourse is aimed at wooing potential

international investors by creating an almost magical vision of a

renewable energy landscape that does not yet exist in a dramatic

performance which, in turn, creates an expectation that is the pre-

requisite of economic performance. This discursive territorialisa-

tion “does political work”(Bridge et al. 2013, p. 336) in positioning

the South African government at the centre of global energy tran-

sitions and attracting investment, while simultaneously occluding

questions about land.

The South African renewable energy transition illustrates the

ways in which sunlight and wind are now constituted in wider

energy transitions as inert resources for renewable energy projects

while being mobilised as new means for capital accumulation. The

Northern Cape has exceptionally high levels of insolation (see

Fig. 1), but the sun is not a resource that can be directly plundered.

As with diamond mining, land is the key resource from which value

can be extracted. However, the ‘diamond in the sky’discourse

creates an image of riches being generated from a shared, distant

and renewable resource (the sun) and diverts attention from the

fact that the solar energy production under REI4P is industrial in

scale, requiring signiﬁcant swaths of land (Huber, 2015). The only

hint of this in the Minister's speech is the reference to the Northern

Cape being sparsely populated. While this is true (the Northern

Cape is South Africa's largest and least populated province with just

over one million people), most land is either commercially-owned

(also the case in the sites for wind energy development) or

municipally-owned. Most of the REI4P projects are being built on

commercial farmland (the semi-arid lands of the Northern Cape, for

example, are used primarily for grazing). IPPs thus need to secure

agreements with landowners on transfer of ownership or lease

rights for REI4P projects; as a consequence of prevailing land

ownership patterns, these agreements serve the interests of com-

mercial (mainly white) landowners. In the Northern Cape, land

deemed previously to have low agricultural value escalates in value

when positioned in the optimal zones for solar energy production

(Fig. 1). Landowners choosing to lease rather than to sell will

receive the bulk of the lease payments for renewable energy pro-

jects, on average about 2% of the total revenues over the 20-year life

of the project.

Given that these are private transactions, it is

virtually impossible to ﬁnd information on the actual beneﬁt

accruing to landowners and it would not be in the government's

interest to seek greater transparency (McDaid, 2014), but the

returns are likely to be considerable.

It is notable that the renewable energy transition has coincided

with new legislation regarding land rights. In June 2014, the

Restitution of Land Rights Amendment Act reopened the land

claims process that closed in 1998, giving groups and individuals

who can prove dispossession after 1913 a further ﬁve years to lodge

claims for restitution or compensation. By March 2016, 143,720

new claims had been lodged. The Northern Cape has seen most

claims settled for land restitution to rural communities and fam-

ilies, often involving “tension between mining and agriculture and

the best sustainable land use in the province”(Government of RSA,

2016). Signiﬁcantly for REI4P, renewable energy developers will

now need to include potential local land claims in project risk

proﬁles. The Act at least opens the possibilities for the dispossessed

to stake a claim for land restitution and/or a share of the lease

payments accruing from REI4P. One successful case concerns the

Tsitsikamma Community Wind Farm near Wittekleibosch in the

Eastern Cape, built on land where amaFengu people were forcibly

removed under apartheid in the 1970s. The community returned to

the land after a claim was lodged in 1994 and is now a 9% share-

holder of the wind farm (Forder, 2015). However, legislation does

not help those dispossessed prior to 1913 and, in these cases, REI4P

could heighten perceptions of injustice. For example, four neigh-

bouring communities in uMkuze in KwaZulu-Natal recently

brought a claim against Charl Senekal, South Africa's largest sugar

farmer and KwaZulu-Natal's largest private landowner, whose bid

to build a R1.1 billion, 16.5 MW biomass plant was approved in

Round 3 (Potelwa, 2015). Whilst the claim has delayed develop-

ment, it may not be successful because Senekal has counter-

claimed that the land has been occupied by whites since 1880.

These cases are important because they counter the reduction of

energy landscapes to inert resource frontiers and reassert the ways

in which they are simultaneously natural, social and active (Tsing,

2005, p. 29). While land is unlikely to give dispossessed people

power similar to that given by coal to working-class people

(Mitchell, 2011), its material properties as a resource ﬁxed in situ

also give rise to very particular forms of territorialisation and

struggle (Li, 2014). Land rights legislation and claims involving

REI4P projects illustrate that historical land injustices cannot be

erased from South Africa's energy transition. The 2014 Act creates

opportunities for some dispossessed groups to stake a claim for a

share of landowner proﬁts from the REI4P process. However, the

government is equally concerned with demonstrating to overseas

investors that there is political will at the highest level to improve

the efﬁciency of doing business in South Africa in order to counter

investor fears of being bogged down by land claims. The following

discussion examines how it is doing this through the spatial tech-

nology of ‘the zone’.

3. Spatial politics and renewable energy zones

The idea of ‘the zone’provides an important means of con-

ceptualising the spatial politics of renewable energy transitions and

their consequences. Reﬂecting on globalisation, Aihwa Ong (2006:

91e2) critiques its structural logic, which she argues “create[s] a

galaxy of differentiated zones [technology zones, growth triangles]

unevenly integrated into the structures of state power and global

capital”. This logic reconﬁgures national space and results in the

“proliferation of differentiated sovereignty within and across bor-

ders”(ibid.); it shatters meta-geographical demarcations such as

‘Developed’and ‘Third World’, which have “re-converged around

enclaves”(Sidaway, 20 07, p. 336). Keller Easterling (2014a:1e2) also

argues that ‘the zone’e“the Free Trade Zone …or any of the dozens

of variants”eis a powerful global form, but focuses speciﬁcally on

the ways in which space has become infrastructural, which I suggest

has deeper signiﬁcance for understanding the spatial and political

outcomes of energy transitions. According to Easterling (ibid.), the

free zone is “meta-infrastructure”administered by public and pri-

vate cohorts. Free zones are necessitated by large-scale infrastruc-

ture projects, which create a need for an administrative authority

comparable to that of the state, but requiring direction from new

constellations of international, inter-governmental, and non-

governmental actors. They are thus sites of multiple, overlapping

or nested forms of sovereignty, where domestic and transnational

jurisdictions collide. Easterling (ibid.)deﬁnes these forms of sover-

eignty as “extrastatecraft”, operating “both outside of and in addi-

tion to statecraft”and in which “multiple forces estate, non-state,

military, market, non-market ehave now attained the considerable

power and administrative authority necessary to undertake the

building of infrastructure”, far removed from familiar legislative

processes. Extrastatecraft thus describes how power is increasingly

http://www.climatejobs.org.za/index.php/articles/89-renewable-energy/154-

renewable-energy-for-communities-or-for-the-big-corporates (accessed 12/12/14).

C. McEwan / Political Geography 56 (2017) 1e12 5

exercised not through the language of law and diplomacy, but

through spatial, infrastructural technologies. The following discus-

sion draws on the concepts of the zone and extrastatecraft to explore

the ways in which renewable energy transitions take on an exper-

imental shape, deploying forms of spatial and political-

administrative exceptionality, which in South Africa are gener-

ating very speciﬁc political and developmental outcomes.

Easterling (2014a, 1) argues that free zones are generating “de

facto, undeclared forms of polity”within powerful globally net-

worked systems. Importantly, she suggests that while binary

resistance might seem powerless and irrelevant in infrastructure

space, activists are also able to engage in extrastatecraft and,

through understanding how infrastructure space works, they can

relieve and challenge oppression. This idea that political gains can

be made is also signiﬁcant in conceptualising the spatial politics of

renewable transitions. The free zone is intended to create a fric-

tionless realm of legal and economic exemptions. However, as

discussed below, it often generates other frictions; as Tsing (2005)

argues, like rubbing two sticks together these frictions produce

movement, action, effect. The free zone can thus be conceptualised

as a “zone of awkward engagement”(ibid.: xi) in which different

competing political, social and spatial interests co-exist uneasily,

but not necessarily in confrontation or conﬂict. Spatial planning for

renewable energy development claims to be based on objective

research, but the process by which speciﬁc areas are classiﬁed as

acceptable locations for development is profoundly political, sha-

ped by power imbalances in the political-economy and often

resulting in environmental injustices (Cowell, 2010). In South Af-

rica, spatial planning related to REI4P is creating different kinds of

zones for development that also have the potential to generate

injustices. However, I suggest that as zones of friction and

‘awkward engagement’they also create possibilities for new, pro-

gressive polities through which injustices may be countered.

4. REDZs: renewable energy meta-infrastructure

Under REI4P rules, a bid can be submitted only once the Envi-

ronmental Authorization is in hand, land rights have been secured,

and the bidder can provide evidence of a notarial lease registration

and proof of land use applications (DoE, 2015). Some cases have

required upwards of twenty permissions, taking over a year to be

processed, and the Department of Environmental Affairs has been

inundated with and overwhelmed by renewable energy projects

seeking approvals. In response, the government aims to speed up

the process by creating zones where doing business will be easier

and quicker for developers, speciﬁcally in meeting the criteria for

compliance. In accordance with the National Infrastructure Plan

(NPC, 2012), Renewable Energy has been included as part of the

Strategic Infrastructure Project for energy, known as SIP8.

A Stra-

tegic Environmental Assessment (SEA), led by the Council for Sci-

entiﬁc and Industrial Research (CSIR), has been initiated under SIP8

to identify Renewable Energy Development Zones (REDZs) e

geographical areas most suitable for the rollout of wind and solar

energy projects and the supporting electricity grid network. The

process will also provide a platform for coordination between the

various government departments that have a mandate for issuing

environmental authorizations or consents to allow for a more

streamlined authorization process. It is intended that through the

SEA process all participating government departments will be able

to pre-assess the requirements for which they have a mandate and

to either issue general authorizations and exemptions or de-list

energy applications.

The SEA constitutes the ﬁrst attempt at proactive spatial plan-

ning for wind and solar energy development in South Africa. REDZs

are zones in which large-scale renewable energy development

would be considered most appropriate based on environmental,

social and economic factors. Their mapping begins with wind and

solar raw resource data in order to identify areas of highest eco-

nomic potential, and eliminates areas of environmental and tech-

nical constraint, including protected and environmentally sensitive

areas and agricultural areas. Consultation with provincial govern-

ments, the private sector and members of the public then narrow

down these areas, although precisely who has been consulted and

on what basis is unclear (discussed below). More detailed scoping

assessments have been undertaken in the identiﬁed areas for

agriculture, landscape, heritage, biodiversity, socio-economic sen-

sitivities and other sensitivities, such as aviation, defence, mining,

noise. The outcome is eight proposed REDZs that purport to protect

South Africa's natural and social resources while enabling SIP8

targets to be met more efﬁciently. The intention is for these to align

with the SEA corridors for electricity grid infrastructure expansion

that is being designed to meet energy transmission requirements

up to 2040 (Fig. 2). The process of approving REDZs by government

for the rollout of wind and solar in the Cape provinces was ﬁnalised

in February 2016. These preferred zones now allow for renewable

energy projects and the associated grid infrastructure to be

developed without environmental authorization, subject to certain

conditions, such as adherence to development protocols.

REDZs are spaces of extrastatecraft in that they operate in

similar ways to free trade zones, constituting a legal and economic

instrument designed to provide exemptions to renewable energy

investors and developers, to incentivise growth in the low-carbon

economy, and to facilitate private-sector development of energy

infrastructure. While they are unlikely to exhibit the most extreme

forms of zone law eunlike some free trade zones, REDZs are sub-

ject to civil law and government control ethey create territories in

which private, corporatized bodies are able to exert power and

inﬂuence in their own interests. Some players in the renewable

energy sector appear to want REDZs to operate more like free trade

zones, with greater licence for extrastatecraft. For example, the CEO

of the South African Wind Energy Association (SAWEA), a not-for-

proﬁt organisation representing the wind industry whose mission

is the removal of obstacles to sustainable wind energy industry in

Southern Africa, believes that the zoning is too spatially restrictive

and recommends the removal of the requirement for additional

local level authorisations.

However, critics are concerned about

the extent to which all stakeholders have been consulted in the

identiﬁcation of REDZs. While the CSIR claims that it has engaged

with affected communities,

a recent study has found that not a

single person interviewed in these communities has heard of the

strategic environmental assessments (McDaid, 2014). There is also

a considerable threat of land grab occurring within REDZs, partic-

ularly if potential investors believe there are too few and the overall

availability of land is too small. Land values are highly likely to

increase within REDZs, raising the potential for the possibility of

corrupt and anti-competitive practices.

Although there is very little public debate about potential land

grab in relation to REI4P, the spectre of South Africa's land question

becoming a lightning rod for protest may have prompted pre-

emptive legislation that counters the discursive erasure in

http://www.gov.za/issues/national-infrastructure-plan (accessed 15/06/15).

http://www.sawea.org.za/ceo-blog/79-environmental-authorisations.html

(accessed 15/06/15).

http://www.sawea.org.za/ceo-blog/79-environmental-authorisations.html.

http://www.infrastructurene.ws/2014/06/05/strategic-search-for-best-

renewable-energy-development-zones/ June 19, 2015.

C. McEwan / Political Geography 56 (2017) 1e126

government rhetoric. The President's State of the Nation Address in

February 2015 indicated that a Regulation of Land Holdings Bill,

likely to become law in 2016, would be submitted to Parliament.

This will prohibit foreigners, including legal entities whose domi-

nant shareholder or controller is a foreign-controlled enterprise or

interest, from owning land (speciﬁed as agricultural rather than

residential) in South Africa. They would instead be eligible only to

lease land for periods of between 30 and 50 years. This has the

potential to have widespread effects on the country's mining, en-

ergy and agricultural sectors, as well as on REI4P. Successful IPP

bidders, almost all of which have a dominant or controlling foreign

shareholder, have had the option to secure land rights through

either land acquisition or a registered long-term lease. To date

REI4P developers have demonstrated a preference for leasehold

structures, but REDZs make the acquisition of land and land spec-

ulation more attractive. The proposed Bill will thus provide

important protection against land grabs within REDZs.

5. Beneﬁciary ‘community’zones: development meta-

infrastructure

The REI4P stipulates that communities within a 50 km radius of

projects must beneﬁt from socio-economic development, creating

a second type of zone and forming the “meta-infrastructure”

through which extrastatecraft is practised (Easterling, 2014a, p. 2).

Two speciﬁc criteria pertain to local development within these

zones; ﬁrstly, ‘communities’are entitled to own 2.5e5% of the

project shareholding; secondly, the private sector is required to

contribute 1e1.5% of project revenues over the duration of the

project to local socio-economic development through initiatives

that promote access to the economy by black people, including

health, education, service delivery, arts and sports programmes

(Wlokas, Boyd, &Andolﬁ,2012). This is arguably a laudable attempt

by the South African government to leverage local, primarily rural,

economic development out of REI4P and might also be seen as off-

setting the higher price tariffs that have resulted from early pro-

curement rounds. However, as critics have pointed out (see

McEwan et al., 2017; Baker &Wlokas, 2014; Tait, Wlokas, &Garside,

2013; Wlokas et al. 2012), these development zones present a

number of problems.

First, what constitutes ‘community’is not deﬁned, but treated as

an arbitrary geographically delimited object for development

intervention. In many cases, the 50 km zone in effect comes to

deﬁne ‘the community’. Second, the zone is a homogenised spatial

entity that occludes difference within its boundaries. The areas

surrounding renewable energy projects are likely to incorporate

several social groupings, in separate locales and speaking different

languages, with little cohesion, unity or common identity. They

may also cross municipal, provincial and/or national boundaries.

Failing to account for such diversity is potentially problematic in

the context of South Africa. Third, the 50 km radius produces

Fig. 2. Proposed REDZs and preliminary EGI corridors (source: adapted from Cape-Ducluzeau and van der Westhuizen 2015).

http://www.gov.za/president-jacob-zuma-state-nation-address-2015.

C. McEwan / Political Geography 56 (2017) 1e12 7

overlapping beneﬁciary areas, raising questions about who has

responsibility for community development in these zones and how

development plans are being formulated. For example, De Aar, a

town of less than 50,000 people in an area of the Northern Cape

with limited economic development opportunities is within 50 km

of eight renewable energy projects likely to deliver considerable

revenues

(Baker &Wlokas, 2014). Similarly, Upington is within

the zones of seven projects, and even much smaller towns, such as

Loeriesfontein and Pofadder (both with populations approximating

3000), are surrounded by projects. Developers have not been

required to make their socio-economic development plans public

and they have no desire to share them with other corporations

given the competitive bid process (McDaid, 2014). This has poten-

tial to cause great confusion within zones in which more than one

private sector company is overseeing community development.

Fourth, there is inconsistency between IPPs in how they are

working with ‘communities’inside the 50 km zones. Where the

zone incorporates multiple communities, some IPPs have included

all, but in other zones IPPs have chosen to work with just one

‘community’. This inconsistency has the potential to create in-

equities and to fuel division and conﬂict between communities

within and between zones. There is also confusion where the 50 km

limit includes large metropolitan areas, such as Port Elizabeth and

Jeffries Bay in the Eastern Cape. In these cases, many IPPs are

ignoring urban and peri-urban communities in favour of smaller,

more easily deﬁned, and often more rural communities. It seems

that the ‘village-as-community’is far more easily managed as a

space for extrastatecraft than complex municipal urban spaces.

Fifth, the 50 km zones create artiﬁcial boundaries, often dividing

municipal areas, towns or villages, which heighten the risk of

perceived injustice for those excluded. Finally, some 50 km zones

are very sparsely populated, creating difﬁculties for IPPs in meeting

investment requirements. For example, the Industrial Development

Corporation that is ﬁnancing the enormous 100MW Xina Solar One

project near Pofadder has applied to the Department of Energy to

extend the 50 km zone because “the area around the project is …

[too] sparsely populated”(IDC, 2014).

As with REDZs, beneﬁciary community zones are spaces of

extrastatescraft because they enable private sector actors to take on

responsibility for assessing local need, determining development

outcomes and building infrastructure. Also as with REDZs, industry

bodies would like greater licence for extrastatecraft in these zones;

SAWEA, for example, has complained that the socio-economic re-

quirements are too high (Creamer, 2011). Early evidence suggests

that community engagement has been poor throughout the bid-

ding process and early stages of project development (Tait et al.

2013), relying entirely on a passive beneﬁciary model, which has

not enabled the formation of positive relationships between de-

velopers and communities. Since community development plans

have not been made public, the REI4P process has:

remained totally non-transparent and can be regarded as

structurally ﬂawed as local communities cannot participate in

planning their own local development without access to vital

information about the project proposed for their area (McDaid,

2014, p. 21).

Responsibility for informing communities about development

requirements lies with the project developer because “the detailed

requirements in the bid documents and related guidance notes

have never been disclosed to the public”(Eberhard et al. 2014,p.

29). However, McDaid's (2014) preliminary survey reveals that very

few people within the 50 km zones understand or are even aware of

the potential beneﬁts that should accrue to them. While partici-

patory planning and community development is known to be

fraught with difﬁculties (Cooke &Kothari, 2001), experience in

South Africa and elsewhere suggests that top-down project

implementation is unlikely to solve local problems and can lead to

conﬂict (Tshikululu, 2010), yet private investors and developers

have not undertaken participatory community needs assessments

and development planning.

Within these zones of extrastatescraft, the private sector is

neither expected nor required to relate to existing governance in-

stitutions in determining local development needs. This is signiﬁ-

cant because the roles and responsibilities for local government

differ from project to project and further complications emerge

from overlapping beneﬁciary areas. Developers are not required to

align with local and national development goals and priorities, and

the private sector retains overall control over how socio-economic

development revenues are spent. There is no regional oversight of

projects to ensure efﬁcient spending and there are no mechanisms

to improve community engagement and representation. Moreover,

there is little accountability on the part of IPPs. After bid approval

projects are often sold, making it difﬁcult to identify who is

responsible for which part of the project (WWF, 2015); the only

legislative requirement is that appropriate sums of money are spent

once the project begins to generate revenues. As with corporate

community development in the energy sector elsewhere in the

global South (see, for example, Banks, Kuir-Ayius, Kombako, &

Sagir, 2013; Frynas, 2005; Gardner, Ahmed, Bashir, &Rana, 2012),

evidence suggests that developers focus initially on high proﬁle

smaller projects to build ‘brand image’and promote acceptance.

However, this risks “neglecting strategies to unlock the longer-term

economic potential of local areas”(Tait et al. 2013, p. 21), which

might include gender and youth empowerment, and results in a

lack of alignment between development projects and priorities of

local stakeholders.

In terms of meeting South Africa's developmental needs, prior

research has already revealed numerous problems with commu-

nity development requirements (Baker &Wlokas, 2014; Eberhard

et al. 2014; Tait et al. 2013; Wlokas &Tait, 2012; Wlokas et al.

2012). Targeting spending at extremely localized levels may be

inappropriate or inefﬁcient because it cannot be done equitably by

region or nationally, nor can it be directed at areas in greatest need.

Projects are clustered around optimal resources and where land is

available. As discussed, many are in the sparsely populated

Northern Cape, while more densely populated and impoverished

eastern and north-eastern provinces have relatively few projects;

this pattern is reinforced by the fact that there are no REDZs in

KwaZulu-Natal or Mpumalanga. Thus, as with extractive industries

that have created ‘islands of development’around corporate sites in

a larger sea of underdevelopment (Kapelus, 2002, p. 292), the ter-

ritorialisation of South Africa's low-carbon energy transition is

likely to “generate new patterns of uneven development”(Bridge

et al. 2013, p. 337). Moreover, the outcomes within ‘islands of

development’are not always straightforwardly positive and there is

already evidence of unintended negative consequences. For

example, McDaid (2014: 43) has found an increase in the number of

gender-based violence cases in one project area, caused by rapid

inﬂux of single male migrants and a sudden increase in local

employment, with an associated rise in alcohol and drug use. There

has been a sudden rise in teenage pregnancies, single mothers, and

increased risk of HIV/AIDS infection rates in project beneﬁciary

As McDaid (2014) points out, speciﬁc numbers for particular projects are not

available as this information is not in the public domain. However, the ﬁgure for

one project mentioned in her study is R84 million, while according to the

Department of Energy, the average value of adjusted socio-economic development

contribution per MW would be R1,769,475.

C. McEwan / Political Geography 56 (2017) 1e128

zones. Evidence is also emerging that rents and food costs have

risen rapidly (often by a factor of three) in towns close to projects

(ibid.). This is clearly beneﬁcial for property owners, but makes life

increasingly difﬁcult for those too poor to buy their own houses or

dependent on the availability of affordable rental accommodation.

Whether or not REI4P will be successful in creating spaces in which

a just energy transition can occur requires further investigation as

projects begin to generate revenues. However, the record of energy

companies in corporate community development in South Africa

and elsewhere in the global South is not generally positive (Farrell,

Hamann, &Mackres, 2012;Kapelus, 2002). There is little to suggest

that the zonal technologies of REI4P will break the mould.

6. ‘Zones of awkward engagement’?

Spaces of renewable energy in South Africa are bounded zones

in localities and simultaneously globalised zones of capital,

competition and speculation. They thus have potential to create

friction. Most early analyses of REI4P view these frictions in largely

negative terms. Baker and Wlokas (2014), for example, point out

that REI4P has prevented many national ﬁrms from entering into

and/or retaining a share in the market. This has been a feature

particularly of Rounds 3 and 4 because smaller national players

have been unable to compete with the low tariffs offered by foreign

companies. One of the reasons for this is that, as Baker (2015: 152)

argues, the most recent REI4P rounds have seen “a surge of

corporate ﬁnanced projects”, with international investors taking

more risks for lower returns “because of their track record and

experience, their access to capital and the likelihood that they have

preferential pricing agreements with equipment manufacturers”

(ibid.: 153).

The market has certainly become increasingly dominated by big

foreign energy and project-development corporations. For

example, the Italian giant ENEL secured more than one third of

projects in Round 3 (two wind and four solar projects) and a further

three wind projects in Round 4 (DoE, 2015). It now controls 938MW

of wind and solar power in South Africa. Norwegian company

Scatec controls 6 solar projects generating 448MW. Other big

players are Ireland's Mainstream Renewable Power and China

Longyuan Power, and it appears that the ownership of the pro-

gramme is increasingly becoming the domain of equity investors

and foreign utilities (Baker, 2015). Evidence is also emerging to

suggest that, following global trends in project ﬁnance, project

developers are selling on their equity to larger players, which will

result in the extraction of capital from South Africa, as has been

witnessed in other parts of the economy (Ashman, Fine, &

Newman, 2011). Ownership of ﬁrms is likely to rest “increasingly

with ﬁnancial investors as shareholdings become tradable ﬁnancial

assets”(Baker, 2015, p. 148). This distances them from their original

productive asset, places emphasis on maximising return on equity

as the key objective, and puts the focus on short-term ﬁnancial gain

and extraction of rents rather than long-term sustainability.

Due to increased competition and falling international prices of

capital equipment, price tariffs are falling for South African con-

sumers (solar PV tariffs fell by 68% in Round 3 compared to Round 1,

and for wind by 42% (Eberhard et al. 2014; DoE, 2013b) and both fell

again in Round 4), but this money is increasingly likely to leave the

country. This is generating fears that REI4P is increasingly unsus-

tainable in ﬁnancial terms and national economic beneﬁts. There is

a contradiction between, on the one hand, the commercial desires

for maximisation of shareholder value and short-term capital gains

and, on the other hand, the government's desire to retain a pro-

portion of capital gains through the progressive requirements for

community ownership and economic development (Baker, 2015).

The government may have intended to create a programme with

national interests at its core, but it may prove difﬁcult to “protect

economic and social beneﬁts …in the face of international capital”

(ibid.: 155). Signiﬁcantly, however, while international speculators

are attracted to invest in REDZs, REI4P ensures that their aspirations

are realized only when mediated through government and local

discourses of development, including a minimal level of local

community ownership. REDZs are thus ‘zone[s] of awkward

engagement’in which frictions, tensions and contradictions are

being played out. As Tsing (2005) suggests, these frictions need not

automatically translate as negative for local communities. There are

possibilities for stakeholders in beneﬁciary communities to form

new polities and engage in extrastatecraft through which to hold

both private sector and state interests to account for what is being

promised by REI4P. The shape and nature of these polities depends

on both the nature of the community development enacted by

investors and the nature of local activism. As Easterling (2014b)

argues, the key to positive outcomes lies in local communities

understanding how these new infrastructure spaces work and be-

ing able to engage in extrastatecraft in ways that counter potential

injustice.

The possibility of conﬂict between corporate and community

stakeholders is more likely if REI4P appears to be protecting the

interests of global capital rather than resolving “energy apartheid”

(Corbyn, 2010), and there has been a notable silence concerning the

role of REI4P in the latter. There are two aspects to energy apartheid

in South Africa. First is the divide between those who can afford to

pay for electricity and those who cannot. Energy poverty is a

considerable problem: on average, households spend 14% of their

total monthly household income on energy needs, which is higher

than the international benchmark of 10% for energy poverty. Close

to half of all South African households and almost three quarters

(72%) of those in the poorest quintile are energy poor (DoE, 2013a).

This has led to widespread disconnection, in spite of the intro-

duction of ‘life-line tariffs’(McDonald, 2009: xviii). While each

bidding round of REI4P has seen reductions in price tariffs

(Eberhard, 2013), the Round 4 Northern Cape projects can only be

connected when grid capacity has been increased by 2018. Given

that tariffs are ﬁxed in the REI4P bidding process and capital costs

are likely to continue to fall, this could be a form of arbitrage with

initially cheaper tariffs becoming unfavourable to consumers.

The second aspect of energy apartheid is the divide between

those who have access to grid electricity and those who do not.

REI4P is concerned with electricity generation and is not intended

to respond to the needs of those 12 million South Africans who do

not have access to grid electricity. Consequently, zones of friction

are emerging in which communities adjacent to renewable energy

projects are becoming intricately connected with global processes,

but remain (literally) disconnected from their beneﬁts. Many of the

wind farms are located on the Eastern Cape coast, close to some of

the densest concentrations of people without access to electricity,

despite their relative proximity to the grid. Most of the solar pro-

jects are located in the Northern Cape, which has the least dense

medium voltage grid network in the countryand vast areas with no

grid electricity (GSEP, 2004). Signiﬁcantly, inadequate energy pro-

vision has been identiﬁed as a key community need in many rural

areas.

Frictions are likely to emerge from the expectations created

in remote rural areas, in which the South African government has

failed deliver grid electricity, by the appearance of utility-scale

renewable energy plants.

Community and Household Options in Choosing Energy Services (CHOICES)

project 2012e13: http://www.oneworldgroup.co.za/index.php?option¼com_

content&view¼article&id¼1258:access-to-clean-energy-for-improved-rural-

livelihoods&catid¼207:low-carbon-development.

C. McEwan / Political Geography 56 (2017) 1e12 9

Such frictions may enable local communities to put pressure on

renewable energy developers to respond to energy poverty as part

of their community development commitments. However, even if

community needs are factored into community development plans,

without grid roll-out developers are likely to experiment with

distributed generation (e.g. mini-grid) solutions, with which there

is already local dissatisfaction. For example, in 2012, the Northern

Cape provincial government invested R1 million in a household-

level solar PV pilot project in the small informal settlement of

Boomplaas, near Keimoes. Interviews with the 16 households

suggest that the project has brought some beneﬁts to most,

including the provision of lighting and the ability to charge cell-

phones. However, some systems have already failed or work only

intermittently

and all community members are disappointed by

the system's low capacity, having been led to believe that it would

possess similar functionality to grid power. Current usage patterns,

especially poor management of batteries, which result from inef-

fective training of users and technical weaknesses in project design,

are compromising system longevity. Due to the relatively low po-

wer capacity, people's needs eprincipally the ability to cook and

use a refrigerator, which they see as making most difference to their

quality of life eare not being met. No mechanism has been put in

place to provide the required on-going maintenance and engi-

neering support. Furthermore, divisions within households and the

community are being created with householders suspicious as to

why some people's systems work better than their own. Unless

properly resourced, it seems that mini-grid systems as energy so-

lutions for rural communities are unlikely to resolve tensions.

The outcome of friction between global energy corporations and

local people with whom they are being forced to engage remains to

be seen, but as Tsing (2005) demonstrates in the context of

Indonesia, similar frictions in similar zones of awkward engage-

ment have altered dramatically, and not often positively, the lives of

poorer and weaker parts of society. In the context of a just energy

transition in South Africa, it will be important for REI4P to avoid

creating outcomes like those in extractive industries, where similar

social processes and profound transformations have opened ‘social

risks’to the industrial operation, which have then required cor-

porations to direct resources towards highly conservative forms of

community development (Banks et al. 2013)esupport for law and

order, forms of social technology and paternalistic forms of trust-

eeship ethat remain wilfully detached from political processes

within communities. However, while Easterling's (2014b) faith in

the possibilities of progressive new polities emerging in free zones

may be idealistic, the requirements of REI4P at least ensure that

developers engage in community development, which could

potentially open up spaces in renewable energy zones for these

new polities.

7. Conclusions

This paper has sought to examine some of the ways in which

processes of renewable energy transition are inherently spatial and

political. The South African case illustrates how renewable energy

transitions are intrinsically bound up with historical and contem-

porary politics of land, creating new territories. Within these ter-

ritories, renewable energy transitions take on an experimental

shape, deploying forms of spatial and political-administrative

exceptionality ezones ethat allow political and economic actors

to exercise authority and commercial power. These new spatialities

also set in motion power dynamics, creating zones in which

different political, social and spatial projects and interests are

forced into uneasy co-existence. These new spatialities and the

frictions they bring could entrench existing inequalities, generating

conﬂict and confrontation. However, drawing on Tsing (2005) and

Easterling (2014b), this paper suggests that they also have potential

to create new polities in which diverse actors eincluding those

most politically and socio-economically marginalised eare able to

stake their claims.

South Africa's renewable energy transition is notable for the

tensions between government and investor rhetoric on the one

hand, which seeks to discursively erase land, and the nature of

renewable energy transitions on the other hand, which re-centre

land as the key resource and ensure that it is re-valued and re-

politicised. A feature of renewable energy transitions is that they

“require huge amounts of space and territory to generate the en-

ergy that with fossil fuels is simply extracted from a ‘hole’” (Huber,

2015, p. 36). Concerns about the possibilities of land grab by global

investors, in a context in which historical and contemporary land

injustices remain a lightning-rod for political unrest, has led the

South African government to balance attracting foreign investment

with legislation limiting foreign ownership of land. It has also re-

opened legal avenues for land restitution that could complicate

the REI4P process by allowing some dispossessed peoples to claim

either compensation or a share of landowner dividends.

New forms of territory through zoning are emerging from South

Africa's renewable energy transition. These include REDZs eiden-

tiﬁed as optimal zones for the location of wind and solar energy

projects that to some extent mimic free trade zones in making

business easier for international investors. They also include ben-

eﬁciary zones drawn around each renewable energy project in

which private sector actors are charged with deﬁning ‘community’

and delivering development, an area in which they lack experience

and expertise and have no demonstrable record of competence.

This paper has suggested that both zones are types of ‘meta-

infrastructure’creating spaces of ‘extrastatescraft’(Easterling,

2014b) in which public and private actors have attained the po-

wer and administrative authority necessary to build energy and

development infrastructure, and to determine development path-

ways. These infrastructure spaces have been lubricated by the

government's shift towards liberalisation and privatization, and

their nature and likely outcomes give some cause for concern. The

level of engagement with people who will be directly affected

within these zones is questionable, the ways inwhich they channel

further signiﬁcant beneﬁts towards land-owners and private, cor-

poratized interests remains unproblematized, and REI4P remains

detached from the wider politics of South Africa's energy apartheid.

The stories being foregrounded efor example, that beneﬁciary

zones will deliver considerable community development emay

serve to disguise or distract from the enormous proﬁts likely to be

made by both global corporations and South Africa's elites. How-

ever, understanding these spaces as “zones of awkward engage-

ment”(Tsing, 2005: ix) allows for the possibility of progressive

outcomes to emerge from the frictions between global investors

and speculators, national and local government discourses of

development, and the autonomy and desires of the poorest and

weakest in society.

This paper has demonstrated that renewable energy transitions

are spatially-constituted and political processes, rather than pro-

cesses simply affecting places. This has signiﬁcant implications for

policy, not least because, as Bridge et al. (2013: 339) argue, “spatial

difference and the fundamentally uneven nature of spatial in-

teractions are both potentially disruptive to policy because they

complicate many of its assumptions”. In the case of REI4P, the

government aims to bolster electricity supply to the grid through

renewable resources, while ensuring that local communities

beneﬁt from socio-economic development, and understanding the

Interviews were conducted between 22/02/13 and 28/02/13.

C. McEwan / Political Geography 56 (2017) 1e1210

ways in which spatial interactions and interrelations are enabling

or frustrating these policy goals will continue to be important as

REI4P becomes further embedded. More broadly, South Africa's

renewable energy transition illustrates the ways in which spatial

and political processes matter in making sense of energy trans-

formations (Calvert, 2015; Pasqualetti, 2011). Renewable energy

transitions produce spatial outcomes and create new territories

that are also deeply politicised and policy-relevant. While these

outcomes are clearly context-speciﬁc, similar spatial processes are

shaping and emerging from renewable energy transitions around

the world. That these remain largely unexamined suggests that

political geography has much to offer in re-engaging with energy,

not simply as a resource in the traditional sense, but as potentially

constitutive of new spatial patterns and processes, new polities and

new development pathways.

Acknowledgements

The research informing this paper was funded by EPSRC (EP/

K503368/1) and supported by Durham Energy Institute. I wish to

thank Dr David Bek, who carried out the interviews with off-grid

residents in the Northern Cape, and colleagues at Durham Univer-

sity (Dr Douglas Halliday (Physics), Marek Szablewski (Physics) and

Neal Wade (Engineering)) who participated in the wider project

that inspired this paper. Harriet Bulkeley and Emma Mawdsley

offered invaluable advice on an earlier draft of this paper, which

helped reﬁne the arguments, and I am also grateful to three re-

viewers for their clear, constructive and insightful comments. Any

errors are the author's sole responsibility. I would like to thank

Chris Orton in the Geography Cartographic Unit at Durham Uni-

versity for redrawing the maps.

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Book

Feb 2018

Democratization in South Africa has been accompanied by continuing and even deepening economic inequalities. Rather than proposing a blueprint for a more equable economic system, this book presents the results and implications of wide-ranging research on the history and current dynamics of the South African economy over the past fifty years. The authors analyze a range of strategic economic trajectories, linking these to the shifting balance of economic and political power, and they set the parameters within which the economic and political debates are conducted. The acclaim with which democratization in South Africa has been greeted has been tempered by the recognition that there are at the same time continuing and even deepening economic inequalities. This is more disturbing given the extreme economic disparity experienced by much of the black population, the retreat from commitments to public ownership enshrined in the Freedom Charter, the unambiguous safeguarding of private capital, and the obstacles placed in the way of progressive economic policies by business interests and the entrenched apartheid-era bureaucracy. Rather than proposing a blueprint for a more equable economic system, this book presents the results and implications of detailed and wide-ranging research on both the history and current dynamics of the South African economy, from the Second World War to the present. The authors analyze a range of strategic economic trajectories, linking these to the shifting balance of economic and political power in South Africa. But their approach is not prescriptive; instead they set the parameters within which the economic and political debates are conducted. They also discuss the theoretical arguments involved in the propositions that they and others have put forward. The books value is enhanced by the comprehensiveness of the data presented, and each chapter is self-contained so that particular topics can be studied separately.

Zone: The Spatial Softwares of Extrastatecraft

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