Minister cracks down on Eskom, Sasol over pollution

JOHANNESBURG - Eskom and Sasol, South Africa’s two biggest polluters, must comply with emission limits even if it costs them tens of billions of rand, Environment Minister Barbara Creecy said.

The companies, which use coal to produce electricity and gasoline respectively, have sought to avoid installing so-called flue-gas desulfurisation, or FGD, units at their facilities to reduce sulfur dioxide pollution because of the cost.

That’s unacceptable, said Creecy. Eskom says the cost of installing FGD at a single power plant, Medupi, is R42 billion.

“I have told both Eskom and Sasol, personally, that I expect them to meet the minimum air-quality standards. How they do it is their business but it is my expectation that they do it,” Creecy, 62, said in an interview last week. “My job is enforcement of standards, their job is compliance.” Creecy has ordered the idling of generation units at state-owned Eskom’s Kendal power plant and the filing of a criminal case against the utility because it misled an air-quality regulator. South Africa is the world’s 12th-biggest source of greenhouse gases and relies on coal for almost all its power generation. Eskom has 15 coal-fired plants.

Environmental activists say the poor air quality in the vicinity of Eskom’s and Sasol’s plants is a violation of South Africans’ constitutional rights and kills as many as 2, 000 people a year.

They have dragged Creecy into a court battle to ensure the problem is rectified. The minister concedes that pollution is a problem.

“It’s very important to start making examples of companies and making it clear that if you transgress, we are going to deal” with it, she said.