City-to-city partnerships

The partner cities will be supported by exchanging ideas with their peers in other cities who have developed successful urban mobility, energy and resource management solutions. This will focus on the story behind the success on governance, finance and regulatory issues. ​

South Africa- johannesburg

The Urban Pathways Implementation Tracker
is tracking the Projects Progress and delivers information on its four main outputs:

​INFORM, INSPIRE, INITIATE & IMPLEMENTATION

city profile: Johannesburg

South Africa´s Nationally Determined Contributions: 
South Africa targets to achieve Co2 emission as 34% below BAU by 2020, and 42% below BAU by 2025.

Population: 56,5 million (2017)
Total urban population: 65, 3% (2016)
Urban population growth: 2,38 % in 2016
GDP: 294.8 billion USD (2016, World Bank)
Total surface area: 1 221 037 Km2

JOHANNESBURG IS RANKED 13THIN THE WORLD OF GREENHOUSE GAS (GHG) EMITTERS. IT IS THE LARGEST CITY IN SOUTH AFRICA (SA), AND REGARDED AS THE FINANCIAL CAPITAL AND THE “GATE-WAY TO THE AFRICAN CONTINENT. 

Johannesburg is located in Gauteng province and is SA’s fastest growing city; it is also one of the few major cities in the world not located near or on a water source. Johannesburg is also host of 70% of SA’s businesses’ headquarters and many multinational corporations. Climate risks such as heat wave-related deaths; flood risks; water and energy demands; and disease vectors are becoming more prevalent.  
Johannesburg has developed an Energy and Climate Change Strategy and Action Plan: the Climate Change Strategic Framework (CCSF) with the objective to institutionalise and mainstream climate change action, systems strengthening and capacity and process development to mitigate and adaptation efforts. Energy and Climate Change Strategy & Action Plan detailing adaptation and mitigation goals, is summarised as follows: Reduce Greenhouse Gas(GHG) emissions: a 43% reduction by 2050; Minimise exposure to climate change, identifying risks and inform planning; Enhance resilience of communities by adapting infrastructure; Understand impact and define measures accordingly; and Incorporate climate change in all future actions and service delivery.

Energy
Johannesburg is a carbon intensive economy delivery 66.7% of total Greenhouse gas emissions from electricity – dependent on coal powered electricity generation. This also exemplifies the problem of South Africa’s carbon intensive electricity supply – the country relies almost entirely on coal for the generation of its electricity. Residential and commercial buildings within the city also rely solely on electricity for its heating and cooling systems. Electricity within the City is predominately provided City Power Johannesburg (Pty) Limited, and although a separate company, is fully owned by the City of Johannesburg.Energy consumption has increased in absolute terms mainly due to the increase in the city’s population. The lack of electricity in the city continues to be most prevalent in informal dwellings (households living on formal dwellings in backyard shacks) and informal settlements (households residing on un-proclaimed land zoned for development). The city also faces a critical challenge of aging infrastructure. 
 
Transport
Johannesburg’s is an inland port, the largest in Africa and fifth largest in the world, which handles 30% of the country’s exports. The majority of Johannesburg’s transport emissions come from road transportation (82%) the majority of fuel use is estimated to be from private cars and minibus taxis within the City. Aviation accounts for 14% and rail 4%. Overall emissions from road transport were estimated to be 5.58 million tonnes of CO2-e.  Of which 3.96 million tonnes were from petrol and 1.65 million tonnes from diesel. Johannesburg city council has developed an integrated transport plan (ITP), which aims to improve mobility and accessibility of its residents.  The long-term aim is to provide public transport network that incorporates, on an integrated basis, all modes of transport, including public transport, private transport (freight and private cars) and non-motorised transport.  Johannesburg has developed the Rea Vaya Bus Rapid Transport system and Metrobus. The City is investing in a transformation process at Metrobus to increase efficiencies and capabilities. It is replacing its current fleet with ‘green’ buses, as well as implementing a revised Metrobus operational plan and integrating it with other transport services.

Waste management 
The City of Johannesburg collects over 1.8  million tons  of  garbage each  year,  with approximately  244,200  tons reflected in the form of illegal dumping, and 1,779 tons collected as litter from the streets. With an increasing population and a few primary sites, the city is running out of landfill space. An aggregate of 8 years’ of landfill space remains, but this varies considerably across the City’s regions.A total of 65 600 (4.1%) of households experienced backlogs below formal once weekly waste collection.The City’s green waste-management strategy is the reduction of waste going to landfills. Pikitup diverted 151000 tons of waste from landfill sites (49 000 tons of green waste, 62 000 tons of rubble and 39 000 tons of dry waste). The Bulk Commercial unit is responsible for the collection and disposal of Bulk (skips) and Dailies (putrescible) Waste from commercial customers. We have witnessed a slight uptick in total number of Bulk and Dailies. Pikitup is the City's fully owned official waste management service provider and is responsible for keeping the city clean and preserving an attractive and hygienic environment for residents and visitors.  Pikitup is in the process of developing several landfill-gas-to-energy projects on the five landfills it manages (Robinson Deep in Turffontein, Marie Louise in Roodepoort, Goudkoppies in Devland, Linbro Park near Alexandra and Ennerdale in Lawley). The city of Johannesburg has ambitions to generate electricity from methane gas and carbon dioxide extracted from waste at the five mentioned land-fills. ​

factsheets on energy, transport and waste management

The factsheets provide a basic introduction to specific measures in the areas of energy, mobility and waste management, which aims to provide a basket of possible solutions to partner cities.

UP Factsheets

e-learning programme

E-learning programme builds on the toolbox and factsheets and aims to provide a better understanding of possible actions, highlighting the experiences from the implementation of measures in other cities building on the wealth of knowledge of international experts. ​

UP E-Learning

Action Tracker

The Urban Pathways Action Tracker provides an overview of the project’s activities in the cities and reflects on the various action areas. The main objective of this is to share learnings with other cities and identify opportunities for synergies with other projects and initiatives.

UP Action Tracker

Capacity building 

Change Maker Programme

City-to-City Partnerships

Regional Replication

policy environment assessment on South Africa

During the 2009 UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen South Africa committed itself to reduce domestic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 34% in 2020 and 42% by 2025 below the business-as-usual (BAU) trajectory subject to the provision of adequate financial,technological and capacity-building support by developed countries (Woolard & Davis, 2015). According to SA’s Peak Plateau and Decline (PPD) pledge, it will peak its national emissions between 2020 and 2025, plateau for approximately a decade, and decline in absolute terms thereafter. South Africa’s NDCs target to limit GHG emissions including land use, land use change and forestry (LULUCF) to between 398 and 614 Mt CO2eq over the period 2025–2030 is equivalent to a 20–82% increase on 1990 levels excluding LULUCF. South Africa’s aspiration in the long-term is that total annual GHG emissions will be in the ran- ge of 212 to 428 MtCO2e by 2050, having declined in absolute terms from 2036 onwards. In response to itsidentification of mitigation targets South Africa developed a National Climate Change Response White paper (SA Department of Environmental Affairs, 2011). The Key elements of SA’s overall approach to mitigation include (SA Department of Environmental Affairs, 2011):

Identifying desired sectoral mitigation contribution: defining desired emission reduction outcomesfor each sector and sub-sector of the economy.
• Defining Carbon Budgets for significant GHGemitting sectors and/or sub-set.
• Implementing a requirement that companies and economic sectors or sub-sectors for whom desired emission reduction outcomes have been established to prepare and submit mitigation plans that set out how they intend to achieve the desired emission reduction outcomes.
• Use different types of mitigation approaches, policies, measures and actions that optimise the mitigation outcomes as well as job creation and othersustainable development benefits.
• Using the market: using a range of economic instruments to support the system of desired emissions reduction outcomes, including the appropriate pricing of carbon and economic incentives.
• A national monitoring system of data collec- tion to provide detailed and accurate emission data to support the analysis of the impact of mitigation measures.

Transport: 
South Africa’s transport subsector is the second-highest contributor to GHG emissions – emitting 61 Mt CO2 in 2013 (Posada, 2018), accounting for 13% of total emissions and for 453 924 Gg CO2eq over the period 2000 - 2010. In 2010, road transport was responsible for 91.2% of transport related GHG emissions (SA Department of Transport, 2017), 7.7% was from domestic civil aviation and 1.07% from rail- ways. Emissions in road transport increased because of motor vehicle sales that increased from 4.2% in 2000 to 15.7% in 2010 (Stats SA, 2011) – motor vehicles are closely associated with higher social status in South Africa. Without mitigation efforts the transport sector is projected to emit a total of 136 Gg CO2eq by year 2050 (SA Department of Transport, 2017). Motor gas con- tributed 64.9% towards the road transport fuel consumption in 2010, followed by gas/diesel oil (35%). Between the years 2000 and 2010 there was an increase in the percentage contribution of gas/diesel oil to the road transport consumption (8.2%), and a corresponding decline in the contribution from motor gasoline (SA Department of Transport, 2017). South Africa’s railway sector uses electricity as its main source of energy, with diesel being the only other energy source. GHG emissions from transport sub-sector activities have increased by 32.2% from 36 016 GgCO2eq in the year 2000 to 47 607 GgCO2eq in 2010 (SA Department of Transport, 2017).

Energy: 
South Africa has embarked on energy and electricity planning actions to begin to transform the energy sector – moving away from its heavy dependence on fossil fuel. Some political hurdles have been present up until 2017, although a new administration has taken power since the beginning of 2018 – policy programmes are underdevelopment to begin to transform the energy sector moving towards renewable energy, increases in efficiency, and reduction inemissions intensity (SA Department of Environment, 2015). Moreover, SA has begun to rollout the Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme (REI4P), approving some Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer projects and further projects are in consideration (Khumalo, 2018). The current administration also intends to also create a South African Green Fund, which would in- clude contributions from both domestic and international sources. SA has also been developing policy instruments, including a carbon tax, desired emission reduction outcomes (DEROs) for particular sectors, company-level carbon budgets, and regulatory stan-dards and controls for specific GHG pollutants andemitters (USAID, 2017).

Waste management
SA’s INDCs indicates that uncertainties exit in the reporting of emission in agriculture, forestry, and other land use (AFOLU). South Africa is also a water scare country burdened with a national infrastructure that was not developed to support its total populations (due to the legacy of apartheid and its history of inequality). In addition, investment in wastewater treatment works has not remained in-line with the growth in demand and use. SA has committed to developing a Waste management Flagship programme that will review and implement GHG mitigation potential of the waste management sector by investing in waste-to-energy, within the solid, semi-solid, and liquid-waste management sectors, especially the generation, capture, conversion and/or use of methane emissions. SA has enacted the Waste Act and National Waste Management Strategy which places a great emphasis on waste minimisation, reuse, recycling and recovery of waste. Yet, 90% of waste still ends up in local land-fills since remains and perception continues that it isa more expedient option. At the local municipal level challenges exit including skills development; lack of resources, i.e. capacity, funding, technologies; inadequate integrated waste management planning, waste data and better infrastructure development using advancements in technology (van Jaarsveldt, 2016). In addition, general societal awareness amongst the general public, consumers, and business owners, islacking regarding the benefits of waste managementand recycling.

Policy Development

Project Development

Funding solutions

Implementation Facility

Action Plans

Bankable projects

Implementation support