South Africa‟s current energy sector places undue reliance on fossil fuels to fulfil the
country‟s energy requirements. The use of these non-renewable energy resources
are unsustainable, as millions of tonnes of harmful emissions are released and
estimates are made that these resources will be depleted within the next 100 years.
Therefore the country has to source alternative energy resources. Renewable
energy resources (for example solar energy) are considered to release little or no
harmful by-products and have an infinite supply. Therefore the South African
government has to promote the use of renewable energy as part of its commitments
to address climate change and to ensure sustainable energy resources.
Some of the most popular regulatory tools that a state uses to control human
behaviour, is through command-and-control instruments and fiscal instruments. The
latter promotes behavioural changes by rewarding desired behaviour which
ultimately advances the user‟s own best interest. Because of the nature of renewable
energy governance, energy users can not be forced or compelled through commandand-
control instruments to use renewable energy. They should rather be encouraged
or persuaded to use this form of energy through market-based instruments. This is
also the central hypothesis of this dissertation.
The purpose of this study is to determine the extent to which the South African legal
regime makes provision to promote the use of renewable energy resources through
fiscal instruments. Therefore the various energy-related white papers, policy papers
and legislation will be analysed. This study found that South Africa‟s legal regime
only partly makes provision to promote the use of renewable energy resources
through fiscal instruments. The policy part of the legal regime is fairly well developed,
but the statutory regime lacks detail and in its current form, environmental/energyrelated
legislation does not fully correspond with the lofty objectives of the policy
framework. / LLM (Environmental Law and Governance), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2015
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:nwu/oai:dspace.nwu.ac.za:10394/14911 |
| Date | January 2014 |
| Creators | Coetzer, Michél |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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