South Africa’s Presidential Climate Commission said the energy ministry has an inadequate plan to tackle the country’s power supply crisis and its lack of attention to air quality and climate change puts it in conflict with the law and international agreements.
The draft IRP said a plan based on renewable and clean energy alone would “only deliver” the decarbonisation of the power system. "However, these pathways do not provide security of supply while carrying the highest cost to implement.”
South Africa may be able to raise as much as 1.13 trillion rand ($60 billion) over the next five years to fund a switch to green energy from fossil fuels, its environment minister said.
Fostering increased collaboration between private players and regional governments will be crucial to optimise renewable energy resources at a larger scale.
Eskom has imposed conditions to access the national grid on 1,850 megawatts worth of projects in South Africa that developers including Karpowership and Electricite de France have struggled to complete since they were awarded in March 2021.
The surprise departure of Oberholzer comes as Eskom struggles to provide power to South Africa. Eskom announced Stage 6 loadshedding on the weekend, reducing this as the week began.
The move comes as Eskom has warned that load shedding is on the rise. It has warned this could reach Stage 8 in the coming winter, in a worst-case scenario.
“We are deeply concerned about reports that the erstwhile CEO solicited funds from unknown sources that were channelled through Business Leadership,” the ANC said. The organisation should “reveal how much was paid to apartheid era agents” the statement continued.
OUTA also celebrated another success today in its efforts to enforce public transparency. Minister of Finance Enoch Godongwana withdrew an exemption that would have limited disclosures from Eskom. This would cover “any irregular expenditure and fruitless and wasteful expenditure” in its annual statements.
Eskom Holdings is considering buying electricity from a Karpowership plant to be located offshore Mozambique after declining to sign agreements to procure power from facilities the Turkish company planned to moor off the South African coast.
The immediate priority is to “turn around the performance of existing power stations and stabilize our energy supply, whilst adding new capacity to the grid”, Ramokgopa said.
“We’ve started closing the taps and that doesn’t make you any friends. There’s a long list of people” who might have wanted to kill him, de Ruyter said.
The government has said it is keen to establish – with Eskom, Treasury and the Department of Public Enterprises – a means to build new transmission infrastructure. This would allow more private sector participation in transmission, it said.
A greenfield LNG project requires “absolute harmonisation of business objectives and risk allocation and for the state-owned enterprises to be singing from the same hymn sheet”.
The statement noted that green ammonia produced domestically would reduce South Africa’s reliance on imports and the strain on its overburdened rail network.
The Democratic Alliance (DA) noted there had been more than 120 days of power problems in 2022. NERSA’s increase, it said, is “official sanctioned daylight robbery against citizens”.
Outgoing Eskom CEO Andre de Ruyter has survived an alleged attempt on his life, involving a cup of coffee – and cyanide.
Eskom, on December 23, reported its gross debt had reached 396.8 billion rand ($23.4bn) for the year to March 2022.
South Africa needs to upgrade its coal-fired power plants rather than focus on renewable energy, according to a sanctioned Russian billionaire who made his fortune in part from generating electricity using the fuel.
“Eskom, by not attending to load shedding, is actively agitating for the overthrow of the state,” Mantashe said.
ABB has agreed to pay 2.5 billion rand ($144 million) to South Africa in order to resolve criminal conduct relating to its work for power utility Eskom.
South Africa’s government will utilize 90% of an $8.5 billion climate-finance package that wealthy nations offered it to transition to cleaner energy to bolster its power supply, according to an investment plan released on Friday.
Eskom has signed land lease agreements with four renewable energy providers in an attempt to jumpstart South Africa’s power plans.
A substation in Durban exploded last night in a dramatic display, bringing more power problems to the country.
Starsight Energy and SolarAfrica have set out a plan to merge and expand into new areas, particularly Francophone West Africa.