Forestry, fisheries and the environment minister Barbara Creecy is adamant that her department will be objective in deciding on any environmental authorisation application by Karpowership.
She made this statement in response to a question at a media briefing on Friday about whether she had come under pressure from cabinet to grant this authorisation as both President Cyril Ramaphosa and mineral resources and energy minister Gwede Mantashe have expressed their strong support for bringing in emergency energy through powerships to help deal with SA’s electricity crisis.
In 2021 Karpowership SA, majority-owned by a Turkish energy company, was appointed by the department of mineral resources & energy as one of the preferred bidders in the emergency energy procurement programme.
The bid included bringing its gas-to-power floating power stations to the ports of Coega, Saldanha and Richards Bay to generate about 1,200MW of power and supply this to the national grid. The cost of the three projects over a 20-year period has been estimated at more than R200bn, including fuel supply.
However, so far, Karpowership has been unable to get environmental approval from the department of forestry, fisheries & the environment for any of the three projects. It has also faced legal challenges. Environmentalists have pointed to the potential damage to SA’s marine ecology and fishing by burning fossil fuels.
Creecy’s department is reviewing Karpowership’s application for environmental authorisation to set up a 320MW plant in Saldanha port. Two of its other applications have been rejected.
The media briefing was held before Creecy’s budget vote speech to a mini-plenary of the National Assembly.
Creecy stressed that she was the appeal authority with regard to karpower and did not want to discuss the matter in the media briefing “because it compromises my ability to be objective.”
“There is a mitigation hierarchy which is what the environmental impact assessment represents. That environmental impact assessment is managed in an objective manner no matter who is the applicant.”
She said cabinet concerns related to the reduction of red tape and not to any particular power application, but related to all of them because there was a need to get energy onto the grid as quickly as possible.
“There is concern that all applications for power projects should be dealt with expeditiously.”
“That is why we have tried to streamline our decision-making processes so that on the one hand it is quicker and on the other hand there is still quality decision that is reflective of the regulatory environment within which we sit.
“This is not in response to cabinet colleagues. This is in response to the requirements of South African citizens that we should protect lives and livelihoods in this very difficult situation.
“You will hear more from me on karpower should there be appeals and should I have to consider my role in that regard.”
Creecy noted that her department’s environmental impact assessment (EIA) section had reduced decision-making time frames from 107 days to 57 days. There is a project pipeline of 9,789 megawatts for renewable energy applications — 2,899 Megawatts for solar and 6,890 for wind. Many of the applications include battery energy storage systems and associated transmission and distribution infrastructure.
“We have 15 EIA applications relating to transmission and distribution infrastructure which we are also prioritising for decision-making,” the minister said.
Regarding Eskom’s appeal to have more power stations exempted from complying with minimum emissions standards by March 2025, Creecy said had had a meeting with the chairperson of the National Environmental Consultative and Advisory Forum who had indicated that more time was needed because additional modelling was under way on the decommissioning of ageing power stations. Creecy believes this is reasonable under the circumstances.
On air quality, Creecy said her department had developed sectoral targets that outline emission reduction goals for key sectors of the economy and was now engaging line departments to determine the fair allocations of targets.
Cabinet has approved a methodological framework to determine emissions allocation to industrial sectors for the 2023-2027 mandatory commitment period.
The department is also developing carbon budget regulations that will address the submission and processing of climate change mitigation plans by industry.
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