RES Southern Africa has established its office in Cape Town and has started to bring together the local team that will develop these projects and also assess further opportunities in the South African renewable energy market.
“We have identified South Africa as a substantial growth area for our business. The need to meet growing electricity demand, combined with the need to reduce carbon emissions in response to the pressures of climate change, means there is great potential to exploit the country’s abundant wind and solar energy resources,” said Stephen Balint, Strategy and Communications Director of RES Group.
Thomas Riboud, Director of RES Southern Africa, added: “We have been working on our strategy for this market for some time and this acquisition is the first step of many to come. We expect the South African renewable energy market to be a very challenging environment for developers but we are fully committed to developing these projects and building a substantial portfolio in the region.”
RES is a leading independent renewable energy project developer with operations across Europe, North America and Asia-Pacific. RES has been at the forefront of wind energy development since the 1970s and has developed and/or built more than 4.5GW of wind energy capacity worldwide, including projects in the UK, Ireland, France, Scandinavia, and the United States.
350 MW offshore
This latest acquisition further boosts this UK-based group’s large portfolio in development, which includes a number of offshore projects. RES first started working in the UK offshore wind sector in the early nineties undertaking feasibility and site selection studies. Since that time, it has undertaken development projects in England, Northern Ireland and France. It successfully consented the Round l Inner Dowsing project and worked with Centrica to support the successful consent application for the Round II Lincs project. It currently has 350 MW of consented offshore projects.
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