WORLDWIDE MARKET RESEARCH REPORT - CISE

EC/IST FP6 Project No 026920
Work Package: 6
Type of document: Report
Date: 20.12.2007
File name: OP_WP6_D37_V1.0.doc Version: 1.0
Title: Worldwide Market Research Report 323 / 356
as those providing most of France's electricity. Early in 2007 the Eskom board approved a
plan to boost output to 80 GWe by 2025, including construction of 20 GWe of new nuclear
capacity so that nuclear contribution to power would rise from 6% to more than 25% and
coal's contribution would fall from 87% now to below 70%.
Since 1993 Eskom in collaboration with others has been developing the Pebble Bed Modular
Reactor (PBMR) and is ready to build the lead unit of this design. Construction cost (when in
clusters of eight units) is expected to be modest and generating cost competitive. After the
demonstration pilot plant is in operation, the South African government has said that it wants
to order 24 or more units totalling at least 4000 MWe. One quarter of South Africa's
electricity is envisaged from PBMRs. A shareholders' agreement for the PBMR project was
struck in 2005 among Eskom (41%), the South African Industrial Development Corporation
(14%), the SA government (30%) and the US company Westinghouse (15%), now owned
largely by Toshiba. However in August 2006 the agreement expired due to a delay in a
licensing issue, and PBMR Ltd reverted 100% to Eskom.
In the rest of the Southern Africa, the situation is not so rosy. Nevertheless in the totality, this
region is the more served. Namibia for example, has Africa’s third highest electrification
level. At present, Namibia aims to develop renewable energy, particularly wind power, and
increase rural electrification, which presently stands at only 30 percent compared with 85
percent of urban households being electrified.
Unfortunately, many African countries need a lot of natural resources to produce their
electricity: first of all coal but also oil, diesel power stations and water (hydro stations).
WAPP (West Africa Power Pool)
[A14] The WAPP Organization has been created to integrate the national power system
operations into a unified regional electricity market, with the expectation that such
mechanism would, over the medium to long-term, assure the citizens of ECOWAS Member
States a stable and reliable electricity supply at affordable costs.
The West African Power Pool was guided by a Steering Committee comprising Energy
Ministers of ECOWAS Member States, supported by a Project Implementation Committee,