ABSTRACT
The European Union (EU)-South Africa (SA) energy dialogue is one of the newer dialogues, established in 2008. It started quite well, but then appeared to miss some opportunities. Clean coal, carbon capture and storage (CCS), and decarbonization are the most important topics on the agenda, and climate change challenges as well as development issues play an important role. South African and European actors build a quite dense and centralized network within the dialogue. As in all the other energy dialogues, the non-European actors, that is the South African actors, are seen as more important than the European actors in South Africa. In addition state-owned companies play an important role, Eskom being the most important actor in the exchange network. However, there are controversies over market entry for European companies in the South African market. The EU actors address the South African actors more than vice versa and especially the European non-state actors are interested in all the other actors involved in the dialogue. It is the only dialogue in which, besides the EU Delegation, Directorate-General (DG) Trade instead of DG Energy plays the role of an important broker. South Africa has voiced interest in triangular cooperation with the EU and other African third countries, but has received little response from the EU on this. Overall, EU Member States-as for all of our BICS countries-are important partners for SA.
