Published: 4 November 2025

NOA at the EIUG conference: supporting South Africa’s energy-intensive future

NOA was pleased to participate in the recent Energy Intensive User Group (EIUG) conference held in Johannesburg – an important forum bringing together South Africa’s largest electricity consumers and key players shaping the country’s evolving energy landscape. Andrew Taylor, our Head of Trading, was interviewed at the conference.

The EIUG represents major industrial energy users whose operations are highly dependent on reliable, competitively priced electricity. These businesses, spanning mining, smelting, manufacturing and heavy industry, play a critical role in the South African economy, and they also face some of the greatest exposure to rising power costs and supply uncertainty. Against this backdrop, the conference provided a timely platform to discuss how market liberalisation, private generation and energy trading are beginning to reshape the options available to energy-intensive users.

Enabling a more flexible energy future

As a renewable energy aggregator and independent power producer, NOA’s role in the market is to connect multiple generation facilities across the country and deliver clean, predictable and flexible energy solutions to commercial, corporate and energy-intensive customers.

South Africa’s electricity market is still in a relatively early stage of liberalisation, but momentum is building. The anticipated introduction of the South African Wholesale Electricity Market is widely seen as a key enabler of deeper competition, improved price discovery and more efficient energy flows across the system.

At the same time, the market continues to navigate real constraints. Grid evacuation capacity remains tight in several regions, and regulatory and system readiness will need to continue evolving to support large-scale wheeling across the country.

Supporting competitiveness for energy-intensive users

For many EIUG members, electricity represents between 40% and 50% of total operating costs. After a decade of steep tariff increases, maintaining global competitiveness while meeting decarbonisation expectations has become an increasingly complex challenge. This is where portfolio-based renewable solutions are gaining traction. By aggregating generation from multiple facilities and technologies, energy traders and aggregators can help smooth variability and deliver more stable supply profiles to large users. NOA believes this model will play an increasingly important role as the market matures.

Looking ahead

While structural challenges remain, particularly around grid capacity and regulatory certainty, the direction of travel is clear. Private sector participation is expanding, customers are becoming more sophisticated, and the foundations of a more competitive electricity market are steadily being put in place.

NOA remains committed to supporting this transition by bringing diversified generation, disciplined trading capability and long-term partnership thinking to South Africa’s largest energy users.