Give IPPs chance to lighten Eskom’s load
The past three days have shown us that we urgently need to get to grips with this country’s ongoing power crisis. Whether or not South Africa would have had the fierce power-cuts which started on Saturday, if there was no cyclone in our neighbouring countries is an entirely different question. Today our issue is what lies behind the resistance to the introduction of more independent power providers in South Africa. Because, despite South Africa’s propensity to turn serious matters into memes and laugh when the going gets tough, load-shedding is no joke. Just ask any small or large business not to mention the millions of householders who have again this week been negatively affected.
Load-shedding at any stage is an inconvenience but this week’s Stage 4 has potentially lost our metro and the national economy millions of rands in productivity and other costs.
There is no single clear answer although the unions have been at the forefront of calling for Eskom to remain a state owned enterprise.
This sector of the economic and political landscape vociferously challenged government’s rescue plan to split the power utility into three arms. Numsa suspects this is the first step towards privatisation and massive job losses.
However, this argument fails to take in the wider view which is that the status quo guarantees job losses through out all sectors. It is not sustainable and will sure be devastating for our economy.
This leads us to ask why Eskom – which has shown itself shamefully inept in its role as our national electricity provider – still hold a monopoly in generating power for the national grid? If it cannot keep the lights on then IPPs should be given a chance and renewables need to be ramped up on a larger scale.
It is increasingly clear that South Africa desperately needs more, rather than fewer, sources of power.
If anything, IPPs should play a larger part of our energy generation strategy to alleviate Eskom’s load under times of pressure, such as we have seen this week.