Renewables claims false

One reason development has stalled is because SA is forever redoing plans instead of acting on them. A typical example is the independent power producer coal-fired stations proposed in the Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) 2010.

Proposals were received from Thabametsi and Khanyisa. The developers have slaved away for seven years, ensuring they have the mining licences, water rights, surface disposal rights, rights of way, environmental compliance, right technology, financial backing and connections to the grid. Achieving this project development doesn’t come free, and the expenditure is at risk.

Leaping from their ivory tower, two idealists of the University of Cape Town’s Energy Research Centre say in a report headlined Why two IPP coal power plants get red card (May 30) “they should rather wait for the new IRP to be published”.

The researchers claim the plants will be expensive compared with wind and solar power. It is time such claims were recognised as false. Yes, the cost of production of renewables is low, but none of us expects to buy at the cost of production. Eskom was paying renewable producers an average of R2.32/kWh in 2017, but its own electricity, including some carbon tax, cost R0.81/kWh to produce.

There are also false claims that renewables are cheap to install. The present ministerial determinations amount to about 14,500MW of installed renewables, and the cost is about R300bn. An amount of R20,000/kW doesn’t sound too bad until you realise it will be running about 30% of the time on average, so the true cost is closer to R70,000/kW.

Renewable energy is not a panacea.

Prof Philip Lloyd Claremont