Deogracias Kalima

Though still modest by global standards, clean tech is taking off in South Africa, and its fortunes are closely tied to the country’s booming renewable energy sector. The Energy Pioneer showcases 5 exciting clean energy tech startups driving innovation across South Africa in 2026. These include compressed air energy storage, high-performance concentrated solar technology, and an intelligence service for land regeneration.

The Group of 20 (G20) gathering of the world's most powerful economies (excluding the US), kicked off in Johannesburg at the end of November. The host, President Cyril Ramaphosa, is a billionaire with deep coal roots and as a corporate investor in mines. He is trumpeting one of the summit’s main themes as breaking the world, especially the Global South, from the curse of ‘extractive colonialism’ and unleashing a wave of ‘green jobs’.

It was on the back of this polluting legacy that South Africa made lavish demands at the 2021 Conference of the Parties (COP) to combat climate change. The EU, Canada, Germany, the UK, and France promised to provide South Africa with $8.5bn in concessional finance. In return, South Africa pledged to shift its energy matrix toward renewable energy sources. Key to South Africa’s pledges was the decommissioning of 9 of its coal power plants by 2035.