Several academics have criticised the framework that is being developed to guide SA’s transition from a high-carbon to a low-carbon economy for being unrealistic since it ignored many of the institutional and structural challenges facing the country.
A group of academics from the Academy of Science of SA (ASSAf) also expressed concern that the just transition framework, which is being developed by the Presidential Climate Commission, would be a victim of the same fate as other developmental plans for SA such as the National Development Plan and get stuck in the planning phase without ever being fully implemented.
The multi-stakeholder commission was appointed by President Cyril Ramaphosa to advise him and the government on SA’s climate action and “just transition” towards a less carbon-intensive energy sector.
During an engagement with the commission, ASSAf president Prof Jonathan Jansen, of the University of Stellenbosch, said that much of the language used in the draft just transition framework “doesn’t match the reality in which we live”. The document paid no heed to the “rampant disintegration of society” in SA.
He referred to phrases in the text such as “Above all, the just transition can create a more jobs-rich, equitable and inclusive economy”, and questioned how this would be possible when “hospitals, schools, post offices and other institutions were falling apart”.
The document also lacked reflection on mineral resources & energy minister Gwede Mantashe’s perceived resistance to moving SA away from coal-fired power, said Jansen.
During a presentation to ASSAf, Thuli Khumalo, COO of the Presidential Climate Commission, said that 85% of electricity in SA was being produced by coal-fired power stations. Apart from the challenges this over-reliance on coal posed for the country’s progress in reaching emissions targets, carbon-intensive production of goods could also deter other countries from trading with SA in future.
Carbon intensity
The carbon intensity of SA’s exports was twice that of China’s and 75% more than India’s. “SA’s trade partners will make increasing efforts to stop carbon leakage” as importing countries started moving away from transferring production of certain products, such as agricultural produce, to other countries with laxer emission constraints, Khumalo said.
SA, the largest greenhouse gas (GHG) emitter in Africa and the 12th largest globally, committed at COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland, last year to have GHG emissions peak in 2025 at 510-million tonnes and to then reduce carbon emissions to within a target range of between 350-million tonnes and 420-million tonnes by 2030.
According to Khumalo, the just transition framework was aimed at a scenario in which the decommissioning of coal-fired power stations would start by 2025. By 2040 SA would have made a major shift to gas and hydrogen power, and by 2050 there would be no more energy generated from coal and gas.
The “just transition” posed a major risk for workers in the Mpumalanga highveld where 12 of Eskom’s coal-fired power stations, and Sasol’s coal-to-liquid fuels refinery, were based, said Saliem Fakir, executive director of the African Climate Foundation.
It was not easy, he said, to “just shutdown [coal] plants” given that they provided direct jobs and indirect livelihoods.
This included, according to Prof Jacklyn Cock from Wits, informal traders, who were mostly women who relied on “coal workers” to provide a market for them.
There were “high levels of fear and anxiety among mining communities” about the just transition, Cock said.
The type of social transformation that would be needed for SA’s energy transition to succeed “depends on listening to the poor and powerless and addressing their material needs”, she said.
Cock, Fakir and other academics urged the commission to work towards a realistic alternative development plan for what coal mining areas should look like in future.
The commission recently extended the submission window for written comment on the just transition framework, which was published in February, from the end of March to the end of April.
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