INLSA

Mike Mabuyakhulu. Picture: Terry Haywood

Durban is going to get a R3.8-billion renewable energy techno park, a direct spin-off of the city staging the Cop17 climate change conference.

It will be the second biggest techno park in the world, the other being in Germany, says Mike Mabuyakhulu, the MEC for Economic Development and Tourism.

“It is a major coup for us,” he said later.

“It is a winning legacy from Cop17 and means Durban is now becoming a major player in this field.”

The direct foreign investment comes from international private sector companies in Germany, America and also South Africa.

The park will produce solar panels and wind turbines and “the whole gambit of renewable energy,” Mabuyakhulu said. Research will also be carried out at the park.

Twenty-two German and five South African companies are already committed to the project.

And that is just the beginning, he said. The number of companies operating at the park could well grow to 60, he added.

The first phase of the park covers the 2012-15 period.

Some 150 megawatts of energy will also be supplied to the Durban electricity grid.

More than 4 000 people will get jobs – and there will also be an academy where hundreds of artisans and engineers will be trained.

The exact site is still being debated, Mabuyakhulu said.

He was talking at a year-end stakeholder function at the Elangeni Hotel last week, when he bid farewell to Carol Coetzee, the head of his department, who has now joined a Durban-based international accounting company as an associate director for business development.

He praised her for being an extraordinary civil servant and said that going beyond the call of duty was the norm for her.