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Outdated coal-fired power plants and corruption at the state-owned company Eskom are the main reasons. Although the blackouts in this African country have occurred for more than a decade, this year they have been the longest. While, despite promises to transition to clean energy, wind and solar supplies remain minimal.
Power outages are becoming longer lasting in South Africa. Although one of the richest countries on the continent has faced energy problems since 2007, blackouts have doubled last year and so far in 2023, they have reached an unprecedented level. The energy sometimes goes out for 10 or 12 hours, which generates ‘loadshedding’, as they call it in the country.
The situation is so delicate that the Government of Cyril Ramaphosa declared a national state of disaster, the fourth that it has decreed. The other two have been due to floods, and a third due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The declaration allows the Government that places such as hospitals or water treatment plants do not run out of electricity, and also facilitates legal steps for South Africa to buy energy from neighboring countries, among other measures.
But the underlying problem remains and this lies with the state company Eskom, which provides 95% of the energy consumed by the almost 60 million inhabitants of South Africa.
The commission headed by Judge Raymond Zondo determined in April 2022 that the board of directors that was in the Government of Jacob Zuma should face criminal proceedings for what it considered a “culture of corrupt practices.” The report noted that Eskom supplied coal in violation of company regulations and that, in 2015, it had contracts with consulting firm McKinsey for amounts up to ten times Eskom’s revenues.
In addition, the company uses coal-fired power plants and much of its infrastructure is outdated. On the one hand, mismanagement has led to delays in the construction of new coal-fired power plants. And on the other, the money that Eskom collects is insufficient to renew it, since since Apartheid times, the company subsidized most of the electricity for large industries. Back then, power was supplied only to a white minority. Although Apartheid ended, the legacy of low prices continued, so Eskom is mainly dependent on state money.
Even so, the company exports energy to countries such as Botswana, Mozambique, Namibia, Eswatini and Zimbabwe. Since South Africa has one of the highest electrification rates on the continent, with close to 70% in rural areas and more than 90% in urban centers.
Clean energy: a solution to blackouts in South Africa
So far, the African country is highly dependent on coal. This fossil fuel provides more than 70% of the electricity consumed in South Africa, making it a supply 21 times more used than natural gas and not even comparable to the 1% represented by energies such as wind or solar, according to the International Agency of Energy.
This despite the fact that, in the world ranking, South Africa ranks 14th among the countries that emit the most carbon dioxide gases. For this reason, an energy transition is not only a solution to blackouts, but it is also a way to achieve carbon neutrality, which Eskom promised by 2050.
Therefore, in the integrated resource plan From 2019, the Government of Cyril Ramaphosa set the goal of increasing the country’s electrical capacity with wind energy (which would produce 14,400 MW by 2030) and solar energy (with 6,000 MW). In addition, it promised to dismantle several coal plants by 2030 that produced a total of 10,000 MW, and replace them with renewable energy and gas.
In 2020, a program was created that gave the guarantee to independent producers to generate energy, outside the Eskom system. As of 2021, this enabled the Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Acquisition Program to purchase 6.4 GW from 112 companies.
A year later, in July 2022, Ramaphosa launched the energy action plan, with which it raised the license threshold and made private production even more flexible and also bet on improving the performance of Eskom’s power plants.
Although by 2023 all these efforts managed to increase clean energy a little, today they are still minimal compared to coal.
And, on the contrary, while the Government insisted on an energy transition, it also developed two new coal-fired power plants, called Medupi and Kusile, which produce almost the same as the solar energy proposed in 2019, since they generate 4,800 MW.
Additionally, the Government intended to open an additional one, called Thabametsi, in which the French company Engie wanted to invest. However, in December 2020, the Pretoria High Court struck down the project arguing that its 1.2 GW output was going to be one of the most polluting in the world.
In this way, South Africa promised clean energy while reinforcing coal. And so far, it has not found a solution to its increasingly prolonged blackouts.
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