energySugar mills ‘can add 1 000MW’

Efforts by South African sugar producers to invest in renewable energy generation were being stymied by a lack of government policy, Trix Trikam, the executive director of the SA Sugar Association, said last week. The sugar industry “could contribute 1 000 megawatts of power to the national grid”, Trikam said in an interview in Port Louis, Mauritius, were he was investigating the Indian Ocean island nation’s power generation industry. South Africa’s sugar industry, which already generates electricity to run its mills, was willing to invest between R15 billion and R20bn to generate renewable energy, which would create jobs for more than 18 000 people, Trikam said. – Bloomberg