Earth to Mantashe: it’s getting hot
SA’s coal rescuer and renewable naysayer continues to promote ‘cleaner coal’ against the best interests of the country
Who does Gwede Mantashe think he is fooling? The mineral resources & energy minister has been leading a one-man climate change-denialist charge against common sense and the country’s best interests with his inexplicable defence of fossil fuels.
Last month climate envoys from the UK, US, France, Germany and the EU came to SA to convince our government that Eskom should accelerate its shut-down of coal-fired power stations by 2035. Eskom had planned to shut these down, but not so soon.
Why are these wealthy nations courting Eskom, the world’s greatest polluter, as was recently revealed? Because the do-gooders actually want to reduce the disastrous effects of climate change and create net-zero emissions.
What’s in it for SA and Eskom, buried under R402bn in debt? R1.8bn in cheap green financing for building renewable power sources and for refinancing the grid, which is due to be spun off as a separate division from power generation.
If only Mantashe didn’t have family “commitments” at the same time.
Yeah, for all three days that these climate envoys were in town with their whopping chequebook.
This is the same coal rescuer and renewable naysayer that President Cyril Ramaphosa was forced to overrule in June by announcing that companies could generate up to 100MW of power themselves, using renewable or solar means. Mantashe told parliament that month about his department’s “research and survey”. He said: “We had about 10,000 people responding, [which demonstrates] overwhelming support for 10MW” of self-generation. You might think that having been roundly laughed at for making up this clearly preposterous “survey”, Mantashe would find some moral fortitude. Oh no.
He was too busy trying to defend the utterly odd choice of a foreignowned, allegedly corrupt company, Karpowership, that wants to park ships in our harbours, destroying marine life while sucking vast amounts of money — for 60% of the 2,000MW required — out of the economy.
Meanwhile, at the mining indaba last month, as these climate envoys cruelly tried to make the world a better place, Mantashe struck back on the side of vested mining interests by arguing for some kind of so-called “cleaner coal” solution.
“When we talk of carbon capture, storage and use, maybe it’s expensive. Renewable energy was expensive, we invested and brought that into the economy and the price is coming down – we must be prepared to invest in cleaner coal technology,” Mantashe said.
So much for SA having berated the UK for its unscientific approach to keeping the country on its Covid red list. The key difference is that Mantashe is immune to logic, and his belligerence will cost SA, and the world, much more dearly.
For all three days these climate envoys were in town with their chequebook, Mantashe had family ‘commitments’