Friday, March 29, 2024

South Africa’s Energy Crisis Has Triggered Lots Of Ideas: Why Most Are Wrong

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Since late last year South Africans have, once again, been subjected to power cuts by the power utility, Eskom. The need for what’s called loadshedding – planned power outages – led to the recent resignation of Eskom’s chairperson and a flurry of concern about the current and future reliability of electricity supply. It has also raised questions about the lack of progress in resolving Eskom’s financial and operational crises since Cyril Ramaphosa became the country’s president in early 2018.

Besides the importance of electricity supply for ordinary people and businesses, the deluge of opinions and proposed solutions reflects a variety of corporate and political vested interests. One grouping is pushing for the removal of public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan. It argues that the recurrence of load shedding demonstrates his failure to fix the power utility.

Another has blamed the country’s energy minister, Gwede Mantashe. A line of argument against him is that load shedding would have been avoided if he’d commissioned new renewable energy projects and allowed greater decentralised electricity generation by large businesses.

These claims contain significant weaknesses. And most solutions that stem from them have a fatal flaw: they don’t address the systemic problems facing Eskom, in particular its parlous finances. Read more…

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