REVIEW article
Front. Chem. Eng.
Sec. Sustainable Process Engineering
Volume 7 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fceng.2025.1643007
This article is part of the Research TopicCatalytic Conversion of Waste Plastics into Valuable ProductsView all 3 articles
China's Strategic thoughts and suggestions on promoting South Africa's clean energy transition
Provisionally accepted
- 1Shandong Jianzhu University, Jinan, China
- 2Shandong Provincial Academy of Innovation and Development, Jinan, China
- 3Beijing University of Technology School of International Trade, Jinan, China
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This paper analyzes the structural challenges faced by South Africa, such as high dependence on coal power, low penetration rate of clean energy and lagging power grid infrastructure. Combined with the basis and bottlenecks of energy cooperation between China and South Africa, it proposes a multi-dimensional cooperation path centered on technological synergy, financial innovation and institutional adaptation. This path requires both sides to focus on joint research and development of clean energy technologies, cultivation of localized industrial chains and upgrading of smart grids. By innovating hybrid financing tools and risk hedging mechanisms, they can break through capital constraints and promote the reform of South Africa's energy policy to activate market vitality. At the same time, it is emphasized to deeply integrate China's advantages in the clean energy industry with South Africa's resource endowments, establish a mutual recognition system for technical standards and a long-term mechanism for talent cultivation, and ultimately achieve the dual goals of optimizing South Africa's energy structure and regionalizing the application of China's technical standards. Clean energy cooperation betweenChina and South Africa is not only about capacity matching, but also requires the establishment of a sustainable collaborative innovation ecosystem to provide a replicable regional cooperation model for the energy transition of emerging economies.
Keywords: Renewable Energy, energy transition, Energy cooperation, Mutual benefit, China-south Africa Cooperation No. 607, Shunhua Road, High-tech Zone, Jinan, Shandong Province，China (W. Feng)
Received: 07 Jun 2025; Accepted: 30 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Guo, Feng and Yan. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Wen Feng, Shandong Provincial Academy of Innovation and Development, Jinan, China
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