Forestry, Fisheries, and Environment Minister Barbara Creecy said on Friday in her department's Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) section, there is a project pipeline of 9789MW for renewable energy applications.
Delivering her budget vote speech in Parliament, Creecy said: "This is made up of 2 899 Megawatts for Solar PV, 6 890 for wind energy facilities and many of these applications include battery energy storage systems and associated transmission and distribution infrastructure.
"We are working hard to cut the red tape and get these projects finalised and in this regard, we have reduced our decision-making time frames from 107 days to 57 days," she said.
Creecy said grid capacity was a major constraint to scaling up the energy transition, and that was a view across the board with consensus from stakeholders, government, business, labour and civil society.
"Grid capacity is a national priority to solve, not only for our transition needs but also for our short-term emergency to solve load shedding.
"We have fifteen EIA applications relating to transmission and distribution infrastructure which we are also prioritising for decision-making," she said.
Creecy said that in recent times, concerns have been expressed that as the country battled load shedding, they were considering delays in decommissioning ageing coal-fired power stations.
"Government is clear that we must battle both load shedding and climate change. It is not a one or the other decision.
"Current modelling will advise how we balance our decommissioning schedule so we can achieve energy security within the context of our climate change commitments and air quality improvement," she said.