CANARY IN THE COAL BELT
Komati power station is Eskom’s test run for the green transformation of coal-fired power plants. That process will point out the potential pitfalls and, hopefully, shed light on the way forward
Molly Sithole admits she wasn’t sure what to expect when she applied for a new role, helping in the decommissioning and transformation of Mpumalanga’s Komati power station.
“I didn’t know what I was raising my hand for. I was just up for this challenge that I didn’t even understand,” says Sithole, a former senior technician in the power station’s performance and testing department.
After a decade at the facility, she will now step away from her testing equipment and learn more about the construction of the new projects on site.
“We are repurposing Komati for renewable energy,” Sithole tells the
FM. “I am in a new field, now I am called a construction supervisor. How cool is that?”
Komati, just south of Middelburg, was decommissioned last October after more than 60 years of service.
Its end of life coincides with the start of South Africa’s ambitious just energy transition (JET).
The landmark JET Partnership, finalised at COP26 in Scotland in 2021, was a triumph for President Cyril Ramaphosa and his team. The deal will see $8.5bn in funding from developed countries flow to South Africa to finance the move away from coal.
That’s put Komati power station in the spotlight, as the plant’s repurposing and repowering project will pave the way for Eskom’s — and South Africa’s — energy transition.
Following the decommissioning of the 1,000MW plant, a number of renewable and green projects have been established at the site. These include a mini solar plant, construction and installation of a battery energystorage system, a microgrid assembly plant, aquaponics, agrivoltaics (solar combined with farming) and construction of a training centre for renewable energy.
There is a cost to the closure, however: initial estimates in Eskom’s socioeconomic impact study found it could cut R1.7bn from GDP, and result in a loss of 4,166 direct and indirect jobs. But the repurposing and repowering project could mitigate some of those losses: construction is expected to add about 8,700 temporary jobs, for example, while 2,150 sustainable direct and indirect jobs could be created in the long run.
“It’s very exciting,” says Sithole, adding: “We are in the fourth industrial revolution, and everything is digital. I think it is a good opportunity for us [at Komati] and for us as a country.”
A new frontier
When the decommissioning ball started rolling, Komati employees had the choice of applying for new roles in the pilot projects, or being seconded to other power stations where their skills and experience could be put to use.
It’s made for “a bit of a nervous situation”, says Mazz Scott both for those who opted to remain at Komati and for those leaving the plant.
When you “sit and engage” with those who are leaving, “you find that it’s not that they’re not interested, it’s just that they didn’t get the correct information”, she says. “So they feel that they’ve been left in the dark and have not been receiving enough information about the process of all the changes.”
Scott first joined Komati as a contractor in 2008. She joined the Eskom
payroll in 2010, moving through a number of departments before being appointed acting coal manager at the plant 12 months ago.
“Obviously the first choice I had was whether I wanted to move to another station. But there is still a lot of work to do here,” she says. “In essence, as soon as I don’t have any activities myself to do, the station can use me in another area. If they need somebody for a specific task, I am available.”
Of course, not everyone is immediately going to benefit from the reinvention of Komati.
“We’ve had a couple of engagements with the community around Komati and one of the things that I took away is that it’s good and fine to say we’ll have these job opportunities,” says
Scott. “But the problem is we’re not going to have them now. They’re going to come in a year or two, when projects are fully up.”
Julia Taylor, a researcher at the Southern Centre for Inequality Studies at Wits University, has been researching the energy transition in the Northern Cape. She offers a measured assessment: while there’s potential for the transition to create sustainable jobs, it’s not happening yet.
“In the short term, unfortunately, there is going to be a loss of jobs in the coal mining sector, but in the longer term there will be an increase in jobs because of the development of renewable energy,” she says.
“The question is what types of jobs whether they’re long or short term, and what pay they get. A lot of models say
there will be a net increase in job numbers, but if you scratch below the surface you’ll see many of those jobs are in construction, and those are not as well protected.”
There’s a real risk, she adds, that workers especially in the informal sector along the core value chain will be left behind.
“There’s a lot at stake, and it’s a very, very complex transition. It’s not just turning one thing off and another on. There’s a shift in the job types, the duration of contracts, the wage levels and the geography.”
Union concerns
While Sithole says she hasn’t panicked about her future, given Eskom’s assurances on employees’ job security, she feels for the contractors whose jobs are tied to coal.
“For some of our contractors, the job will end because their speciality is related to coal and Komati is no longer running coal, so we cannot keep them,” she says. “As for the Eskom staff, we were told that you either join a new project, or you are moved to another business unit because we have a lot of power stations in this area.”
Unions are critical of the decommissioning process at Komati. Phakamile Hlubi-Majola, for example, spokesperson for the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa, argues that the project and the broader JET are not playing out in a way that supports the “just” part of the equation.
She’s adamant that there’s been no real consultation with workers. “They were basically told that this power station is shutting down, they will be transferred to other power stations. So no consideration was given to where this worker is staying, [and] where the schools are,” she tells the FM.
“They were told, ‘If you don’t move, you will lose your job.’ So they were not given a choice. There was no input from workers in terms of how this process would work best to suit them.” Solidarity deputy general secretary Helgard Cronjé says consultations with his union’s members about the other opportunities at the plant or at other stations were so bad they were “basically nonexistent”.
“People were told they need to look for work at other power stations,” he tells the FM. “But it’s a difficult situation because many of our members are at an advanced age not necessarily at retirement age yet but they’re not in a position to just pack up their lives and move to the next town.”
Cronjé says most of the union’s members had been left in the dark about the process. And, he adds, workers at the Camden Power Station one of the next plants to be decommissioned are equally confused.
“We have already met with their representatives and there’s already so much uncertainty about the process and their futures. There is at least still a lot of time to consult with those members and they can hopefully still be reskilled or look for new work.”
One of the main issues in the decommissioning of plants in Mpumalanga is the impact on the surrounding communities, which are dependent on the stations, he says.
“I think there are a lot of people who need to be heard in these communities who won’t be heard in the consultations. Workers are represented by unions, but many of the people in these communities aren’t represented by anyone.”
Back at the Komati plant, general manager Jurie Pieterse tells the FM that management communicated all details about the decommissioning to Eskom’s employees. He’s also acutely aware of the importance of looking beyond the workers of including communities around the power station, and the nearby coal mines, in the process.
“It’s about creating opportunities and also increasing the skills level to such an extent where they can become part of the localisation project and do businesses they can start for themselves,” Pieterse says.
“In our training plans, we make provision in the funding to train a number of community members from a welder to a wind turbine technician that is what we have listed as the kind of education and skills we want to improve in this area.”
Down the road from Komati, the Hendrina and Camden plants are also scheduled for decommissioning. This triple closure means the coal communities of Mpumalanga will be at the forefront of the JET’s teething problems. With luck, that pain will be short-lived.
This article is part of a series on the JET by news site explain.co.za. Reporting in this series was made possible by funding from the African Climate Foundation