Harmful gas limits ‘off-target’
The new greenhouse gas reduction goals exclude the coal-powered Musina Makhado megaproject
Civil society organisations have received South Africa’s newly proposed greenhouse gas reduction targets with little enthusiasm. The lower end of the emissions range remains the same as the nationally determined contributions (NDC) set in 2015.
The updated NDC excludes the planned carbon-intensive economic zone in Limpopo and assumes that all of the Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) capacity will be built — including 4500 megawatts (MW) of new coal and gas projects.
“The upper limit of the proposed updated 2025 range is only about 2% less than 2015 actual emissions, and the 2030 upper limit is just under 17% less,” said Robyn Hugo of the nonprofit shareholder activism organisation, Just Share.
“These fossil fuel projects will lock the country into many decades of harmful greenhouse gas emissions and seriously hamper South Africa’s ability to meet ambitious emission reduction targets in the future.”
And the controversial Musinamakhado Special Economic Zone project has not been considered in the NDC, according to Just Share.
The zone will need a 3 300MW coal plant to power multiple industries. The project was recently temporarily halted to remedy gaps in the environmental impact assessment.
The project has been met with fierce opposition by environmental rights groups and local organisations over, among other things, an allegedly flawed consultation process and the anticipated effect on water security in the biodiversityrich Limpopo Valley.
“The grounds for opposition include concerns around the significant climate and water impacts this proposed water and emissionintensive project will have for people and the notoriously water-scarce surrounding area,” according to the Centre for Environmental Rights (CER).
One of the reports submitted during consultations revealed that the project would emit greenhouse gases that would represent 10% to 16% of South Africa’s entire carbon budget. “Undoubtedly, this will adversely impact South Africa’s climate obligations. The project’s climate change impact assessment warns that the coal-fired power station may become a stranded asset,” the CER said.
Once public consultations conclude, the NDC will go to the cabinet and then to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change ahead of the Conference of the Parties, which takes place in Glasgow, Scotland, in November.
Maesela Kekana, the chief director for international climate change negotiations at the forestry, fisheries and environment department, described the updated NDC as an ambitious improvement.
South Africa is responsible for half of the African continent’s greenhouse gas emissions and remains the 12th largest emitter globally, because of its dependency on coalfired power.
The NDC is structured around a two-cycle framework for mitigation policy. The five-year cycle will see the NDC reviewed again in 2025.
The targets are also reliant on several assumptions, with an expected boost in finance an important aspect. The key to these is that no new coal is procured beyond the current IRP and that the economy grows from 2% to 3% by 2030.
It also assumes that the Green Transport Strategy — launched in 2019 by the department of transport to ensure that transport is environmentally friendly — is realised.
Also, energy efficiency programmes, and the continued implementation of the carbon tax, is expected to progress.
But finance remains a sticky issue; South Africa will need to find $8-billion a year by 2030 to adapt to and mitigate climate change.
The 30-page document is out for public comment until April 30 and shows that in 2018 and 2019, South Africa received $4.9-billion in climate finance. This was predominantly blended finance or loans, mostly to support mitigation projects.
Despite the shortcomings in the mitigation targets, South Africa will be among the first countries to submit an adaptation communication as a component of its NDC.
South Africa played a significant role in shaping the Global Goal on Adaptation.
“The key goal of the NDC is to improve our ability to mobilise international finance,” Kekana said.
But Hugo believes that investment in additional fossil fuel projects will lock the country further into harmful global heating and growing inequality.
The 2020 Emission Gap Report found that global greenhouse gas emissions continued to rise for the third consecutive year in 2019, reaching a record high.
Even with the drop in 2020 as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, “atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases continue to rise, and the world is still heading for a temperature rise in excess of 3°C this century — far beyond the Paris Agreement goals of limiting global warming to well below 2°C and pursuing 1.5°C”, according to the report.
Tunicia Phillips is an Adamela Trust climate and economic justice reporting fellow, funded by the Open Society Foundation for
South Africa