The smoke is what the coal lobby puts out, in an attempt to screen the net employment trends and potential that are clear in energy development at the global scale.
Skills development is a big challenge, which could be met given appropriate commitment.
Local manufacturing of infrastructure to harvest renewable energy is the key to realising the well-documented potential for employment growth through transformation of the SA energy system, and this requires consistent long-term strategy with unequivocal political support, rather than short-term cost avoidance.
The greatest obstacles to the net social benefits available under a just transition to renewable energy are short-term rent-seeking from deal-making and the facility of concentrated energy for the channeling of wealth, obscured by misinformation about the incumbent energy system, as challenged in this article.