Ideology stands in the way of SA’s energy transition
TStand-off between minerals & energy minister and environmental lobby is approaching a watershed
hanks to transparent briefing by Eskom, we know why we have spent the past week in rolling blackouts. Out of nowhere, generating units at random power stations trip, each one a surprise. Kusile, one of the biggest coal-fired power stations in the world, capable of 4,800MW, and our newest kit, all but completely fell over, riddled with incompetent design. Every hour of blackout turns an investment away. There has to be a faster way out of this mess than we currently have on paper.
Years ago I used to visit Elche, near Alicante, Spain. It is surrounded by the largest remaining palm grove in Europe and politics and the city’s 300,000 trees had intertwined. When the socialists ran the city they did their utmost to preserve the trees. The Elche grove hosts the most magnificent Phoenix palms. Anyone who wanted to launch a hotel or casino anywhere would go palm shopping in Elche.
Under the Left, you could not touch a palm, even on your own property. When they came to power, the Right would lift restrictions. You could dig up palms and sell them. Making the trees commercially valuable, they argued, would encourage people to plant new palms and grow the grove.
We have a similar divide in energy, where an ideological stand-off between mineral resources & energy minister Gwede Mantashe, a powerful figure deeply protective of SA’s coal industry, and an increasingly loud environmental lobby against it, is approaching a watershed.
The environmentalists have money. They defeated Jacob Zuma’s bid to buy Russian nuclear power plants in 2017 and a bid by Shell and Hosken Consolidated Investments to sound-blast the Wild Coast in a search for oil or gas in December.
Mantashe accused opponents of deliberately crippling the economy. “I cannot help but ask, are these objections meant to ensure the status quo remains in Africa … We consider the objections to these developments as apartheid and colonialism of a special type, masqueraded as a great interest for environmental protection.”
Hardly a week goes by now without him making another defiant defence of coal. It is his right and, in some respects, he is right. But by appearing to argue the case for coal alone, he threatens investment in renewable energy.
Change is just unavoidable. In Australia the average residential electricity bill in
2020/2021 was 8% lower than in 2018/2019. Its national energy council credits renewables for the drop.
Perhaps Mantashe is just playing politics. Black coal miners and truckers are important ANC funders and voters. In reality, though, he is also custodian of the 2019 Integrated Resource Plan (IRP), which triggers the end of coal.
Eskom should decommission more than 11,000MW of coal-fired capacity by 2030, says the plan, and by 2050, when my sons will be in their 50s, another 24,000MW. By that time, though, the world (and this debate) will be utterly altered by climate change and its imperatives. The IRP plans for more than 35,000MW of new power by 2030, of which more than 20,000MW will be wind and solar.
To what extent Mantashe undermines his own programme with attacks on groups pressing for a faster transition away from coal is unclear. But it cannot be right to label protests against offshore seismic surveys “colonial” and, by implication, racist. The people at the front of the fight against Shell were rural communities along the Wild Coast.
It would also be good to understand where President Cyril Ramaphosa stands. Climate change is complex and extremely political. In Australia a conservative government has just overseen the launch of a gigantic new exportoriented coal mine in Queensland.
In SA, though, Eskom’s problems, in a macabre way, help. It simply cannot cope and the private sector would be able to build renewable capacity more quickly than the IRP envisages. Indeed, if the ceilings were lifted on how much power existing renewables could generate, the burden on Eskom would greatly reduce.
That is not to say other energy sources cannot grow here. There must be competition and there surely has to be room for some new nuclear. Converting Eskom’s diesel plants to gas, as planned, will help. But a whole new national gas infrastructure would be a waste of time and money.
The big test would be an open market. Let people build what they want and let the grid buy at the lowest prices. It doesn’t guarantee the “just transition” that Mantashe guards so jealously. But neither does delaying the inevitable.