B20 South Africa: What's next for the Energy Mix and Just Transition

Image credit: Tim van der Kuip on Unsplash

That achievement, however, is only the beginning.

The B20’s new advocacy phase is about proof, not prose — converting well-crafted recommendations into measurable investment, technology deployment, and jobs.

Turning goals into outcomes

The 2025 B20 cycle produced 30 recommendations developed by more than 3,000 business leaders across eight task forces, including the energy mix and just transition group.

The focus is execution — how to secure financing, and the standards and skills that turn sustainability goals into tangible outcomes.

Three insights stand out:

1. Credibility now equals implementation. The value of international policy lies in what countries actually build, retrofit and finance.
   
2. Energy efficiency is the first fuel. Demand-side savings are the fastest and most inclusive way to cut emissions.
   
3. Inclusion must be intentional. Women, youth and SMEs must be integrated into energy transition value chains from the start.
   

According to the International Energy Agency, emerging economies will need to increase clean-energy investment six times by 2030 to stay on a net-zero pathway (World Energy Outlook 2023).

That scale of capital will only flow where policy clarity and verified impact exist.

Efficiency’s role in energy

In South Africa, residential water heating accounts for 40 – 60% of household electricity (Saving Energy South Africa Residential DSM Study, 2024).

Reducing that single demand category could permanently shift peak load and ease grid strain more quickly and cost-effectively than new generation projects can come online.

Efficiency is not the glamorous part of the energy story, but it is the most democratic.

It creates work for local technicians, lowers monthly bills for households and SMEs, and frees scarce supplies for industrial use.

For policymakers, it offers the fastest proof that climate ambition can translate into economic inclusion.

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Four priorities

The B20 Energy Mix and Just Transition Task Force highlights four immediate priorities for governments and industry:

1. Set enforceable standards: Phased efficiency and safety standards, aligned with local manufacturing capability, give investors and consumers confidence.
   
2. Adopt performance-based finance: Blended-finance tools and guarantee schemes can de-risk efficiency and small-scale renewable projects.
   
3. Invest in skills: Technical and vocational programmes must produce the artisans, auditors and installers who can deliver at scale.
   
4. Measure everything: Transparent measurement-and-verification (M&V) frameworks are the foundation for both public trust and private funding.
   

Together, these measures create an ecosystem in which cleaner technologies are not aspirational — they are bankable.

Tech and policy

Technology is ready to meet this policy moment.

Connected, solar-ready appliances and intelligent control systems allow users to manage demand in real time, while providing the data that financiers and utilities need to verify savings.

As standards evolve, such “smart-ready” systems can become the backbone of load-shifting and demand-response programmes nationwide - small changes at scale that add up to grid-level stability.

Global priorities

Local manufacturers are already aligning innovation with these global priorities.

In the water-heating segment, for example, smart solar-compatible systems developed in South Africa can reduce electricity consumption by up to 30%, according to field data by Power Optimal.

Scaled across 1,000 installations, that represents an annual saving of roughly 500 MWh, enough to power 200 average homes, and avoids around 450 tonnes of CO₂ emissions.

These are the kinds of measurable outcomes that investors and policymakers alike can rally behind.

As the United States prepares to assume the G20 and B20 presidencies in 2026, South Africa’s credibility as the first African host will depend on what it implements before then:

• Efficiency standards formally gazetted and enforced;
  
• Pilot projects demonstrating verified energy savings;
  
• Blended-finance mechanisms active in public-facility retrofits; and
  
• Documented participation of local SMEs and women technicians in delivery.

If those milestones are achieved, Africa’s presidency will be remembered not as symbolic but as catalytic.

Policy alone cannot power a lightbulb.

But when governments, financiers and industry act in concert — aligning regulation, capital and skills — the transition becomes tangible.

Policy only matters when it changes the way people live and work.

South Africa helped shape the B20 agenda; now we must show how to deliver it.

The next 18 months will determine whether Africa’s leadership in the B20 cycle becomes a footnote or a foundation for global energy transformation.