Public short-circuited

The Department of Energy recently released draft components of the long-awaited Integrated Energy Plan and the Integrated Resource Plan (IRP), which map out energy plans for SA until 2050.

A media briefing on the plans was held on November 22 and the draft reports were published in the Government Gazette on November 25.

By midday on November 28, some important annexures that need investigation to understand how the plans were developed, were still not available on the Department of Energy’s website.

The first public consultation workshop is to take place in Gauteng on Wednesday. People wanting to present at the workshop have to submit their presentation today.

The information available on the energy plans amounts to more than 700 pages of complex documentation.

To meaningfully engage with these documents, public comment needs to pick up the nuance and the detail.

It needs to identify areas of weakness and suggest better alternatives.

This takes time, and this is exactly what the consultation workshop schedule does not allow. Is this acceptable?

While the Department of Energy has effectively had six years to work on these plans, the public now gets less than a week to generate input before the first workshop starts.

The workshops are also planned at a time of year when many people are on holiday or are planning holidays. It is pretty obvious that this schedule was designed to limit meaningful public engagement.

The Cape Town workshop is set for December 13 — the same day the Department of Energy is appearing in the High Court in Cape Town because of dubious process regarding the nuclear procurement programme.

The public deserves fair and appropriate timelines for these consultation workshops.

If the Department of Energy wants to gain any credibility for its planning documents, it must make all the documents available and revise the consultation workshop schedule to start next February at the earliest.

Richard Halsey

Project 90 by 2030