Climate Apartheid? How Elite Adoption of Private Solar Disrupts South Africa’s Just Transition

The language of ‘justice’ is increasingly central to scholarship and policy on climate transition. This acknowledges that climate change impacts are unevenly distributed, and that marginalized communities/countries are particularly vulnerable. Recently, the discourse of ‘climate apartheid’ has emerged, recognizing that in addition to uneven climate change impacts, the mitigation strategies deployed by elites (privileged individuals and groups) also (re)produce unjust outcomes. These debates overwhelmingly vilify elites for accessing privatized technology that may be climate-conscious (e.g. low-emission cars, retrofitting buildings for water and thermal efficiency, solar panels), but are exclusive and prioritize individual security over collective consequences. In practice, climate mitigation strategies frequently deliver both justice and exploitation, while blaming single stakeholder groups risks overlooking their potential to stimulate transformation as well as the roles played by other stakeholders such as the state. This paper critically examines the rapid adoption of solar renewable energy by elites in South Africa. Drawing from interviews and surveys with stakeholders from government, businesses, and households across two South African cities, the paper illuminates the complex and contradictory justice trade-offs produced by elite’s climate mitigation strategies. While the state subsidizes the private renewable sector, elites enjoy climate security and accumulate wealth from public finances, and this produces outcomes that simultaneously contribute to environmental justice (meeting global political goals) and social injustice (undermining state capacity to subsidize services to the poor).