Climate Scorecard’s 2024 Government Climate Leadership Award is presented to a country official who has done the most to reduce emissions in their country’s government over the past year. Below is a copy of the letter sent to each nominee and why they were chosen to receive this award.
South Africa 2024 Climate Scorecard Award:
Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis
Dear Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis,
I am pleased to nominate you for a Climate Scorecard 2024 Government Climate Award. The award is for your leadership in making the City of Cape Town Award for the best city in South Africa to work with in becoming Carbon Neutral by 2050. Your city has received an A- rating for its leadership in addressing the challenges of climate change. This is according to the 2023 Cities A-List published by the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP). This global non-profit runs the world’s environmental disclosure system for states, cities, and companies.
We understand that the city of Cape Town is faced with urgent climate change issues such as decreasing average annual rainfall, heat waves, strong winds, and rising sea levels, among others. The changing seasonality of rainfall often affects the amount of water ordinary citizens can access. As a city, we know that you have implemented measures to mitigate water scarcity.
Since 2020, the City of Cape Town has approved about 18 MVA grid-tied installations commissioned and about 47353kW of PV capacity across the city. The city is undertaking a lot of plans and strategies for solar power across the city, and these include;
- The Small-Scale Embedded Generation (SSEG) program. This allows commercial and residential customers to get paid for every excess generation from their private solar installation.
- The installation of solar power in different municipal buildings. Each building seeks to produce up to 1MWp, for a total of about 5MWp installed.
- The establishment of big-scale photovoltaic power installations of about <10MWp on government land with a goal of 50MWp to be installed by 2030
- The development of a city and national grid connected to Independent Power Producers (IPP) aims to procure 100MW—300MW of solar power by 2030.
The city of Cape Town is at the forefront of climate change in South Africa and has retained its A-list since 2019. However, there is a need for the city of Cape Town to implement measures to avoid water scarcity. Research shows that drought is likely to occur three times more than before in Cape Town due to climatic changes caused by global warming. Therefore, the City of Cape Town needs to implement measures that further mitigate water shortages in the future.
This award comes from the Climate Scorecard. Climate Scorecard is a non-governmental organization that was established in 2015. Climate Scorecard monitors and reports on the status of efforts to implement the UN Paris Agreement among leading greenhouse gas emitting countries. It seeks to alert environment leaders and concerned citizens worldwide about important issues that need to be addressed if the Paris Agreement is to succeed. For more information, visit our website https://www.climatescorecard.org/
Kind Regards,
Rugare Zhou Ron Israel
South Africa Country Manager Climate Scorecard Co-Founder