As SA prepares to add more fossil fuel-generated electricity to its energy supply, the UN issued a stark warning, saying that countries are running out of time to cut emissions and prevent the planet from becoming uninhabitable.
The latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released on Monday should serve as another warning to doubters in President Cyril Ramaphosa’s cabinet, most notably minerals & energy minister Gwede Mantashe, a champion for the coal and gas industries who often seeks to underplay plans to move to renewable energy.
The biggest emitter of greenhouse gases in Africa, SA has committed to limiting emissions to between 350-million tonnes and 420-million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent — a reduction of between 20% and 33% — by 2030.
But SA also faces the dilemma of being one of the biggest exporters of coal, which is fetching record prices amid energy shortages that predated the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Politicians are also mindful of the need to mitigate the effect on workers and communities in parts of the country in which the economy is dominated by fossil fuel production. The country also faces economic isolation as key export markets such as the EU reject the importing of goods produced through carbon-intensive methods.
The IPCC report, the final instalment of the landmark assessment of climate science, urges a swift and dramatic exit from fossil fuel use, as the hopes of limiting global warming to below the target range of 1.5˚C, or even 2˚C, grow slimmer.
António Guterres, secretary-general of the UN, said that unless governments, whom he accused of failing to honour previous promises, reassessed their energy policies, the world would become uninhabitable.
"We are on a pathway to global warming of more than double the 1.5˚C limit agreed in Paris. Some government and business leaders are saying one thing but doing another," he said.
The world will have to cut global emissions 45% before the end of this decade to keep the 1.5˚C limit within reach, but current climate pledges would mean a 14% increase in emissions.
According to the Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) of 2019, SA plans to add 3,000MW of gas power and 1,500MW of coal-fired power generation to the country’s energy mix by 2030, though a new IRP may include a much larger contribution from gas-to-power projects.
Guterres said that investing in new fossil fuels infrastructure is "moral and economic madness". Such investments would soon be stranded assets and "a blight on investment portfolios".
The IPCC report shows net greenhouse gas emissions from human activity continued to rise from 2010 to 2019. Global emissions in 2019 were about 12% higher than in 2010.
Limiting global warming to 2˚C or below would leave a substantial amount of fossil fuels unburnt and could strand considerable fossil fuel infrastructure, the report said. When long-term, capital-intensive assets such as coal- or gas-fired power stations become stranded, they suffer from unanticipated or premature write-downs or devaluations that leave investors or governments unable to recover their investments.
According to the IPCC, coal assets are projected to be at risk of being stranded before 2030, while oil and gas assets are projected to be more at risk of being stranded towards midcentury. SA generates most of its electricity through coal, with Eskom being the biggest emitter, followed by Sasol, which produces fuel from coal.
Last week, the International Institute for Sustainable Development published a report showing there is no need for SA to invest in the gas-to-power sector. The report shows that in March, there were proposed gas-to-power projects for SA of at least 14,000MW, equivalent to 36% of the generation capacity of Eskom’s coal fleet. The report said going through with these investments would be a "costly mistake" and it would delay investment in renewable energy, which is already a cheaper alternative to gas.
This was echoed in the IPCC report, which says the cost of technologies such as solar, wind and electric vehicles has come down greatly. Between 2010 and 2019, the unit costs of solar energy decreased 85% and wind energy 55%.
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