Environmental and social justice organisations have initiated a new challenge to the environmental authorisation granted for Karpowership SA’s floating gas power project in the port of Richards Bay.
The Centre for Environmental Rights (CER), representing groundWork and the South Durban Community Environmental Alliance, said on Thursday that it has submitted an appeal to forestry, fisheries & environment minister Barbara Creecy against the environmental authorisation granted to the project in October.
The CER said that this will suspend the authorisation until the appeal is finalised, presenting a further challenge to Karpowership SA, which is under pressure to reach financial and legal closure for Richards Bay and other projects before the end of the year.
This is the second time the majority Turkish-owned company has applied for environmental authorisation to moor its power ships, fitted with gas-fired power plants, in Richards Bay. But, said the CER, its second application failed to address some of the defects that led to its first application being denied.
“Despite being given clear directions on how to remedy the defects in it applications, Karpowership, via its appointed environmental assessment practitioner, a company named Triplo 4, continues to make fundamental errors, omit required processes and take illegal steps as alleged by the appellants,” the CER said.
Karpowership SA said it acknowledges the challenge from “so-called civil society groups” regarding the environmental authorisation for its Richards Bay project. “While we respect any role in protecting the environment, these groups’ continuous challenges fail to substantively counter the exhaustive environmental impact assessment methodology, which is based on comprehensive research and enhanced public participation,” the company told Business Day.
Karpowership SA was awarded three bids to provide 1,220MW for 20 years via power ships moored in Coega, Richards Bay and Saldanha in the Risk Mitigation Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme (RMIPPPP) in March 2021. The contracts have been the subject of controversy and legal challenges relating to the cost and duration of the projects as well as concerns about their environmental impact.
Authorisation for the projects in Saldanha and Coega has yet to be granted.
Bloomberg reported that as part of Karpowership SA’s submission for environmental approval of the plant in Richards Bay, it bought and donated a game farm to a provincial wildlife authority, Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife. In exchange, Karpowership reportedly said Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife would not object to its plan for a 450MW power ship to be moored at Richards Bay.
In an earlier statement, the company said it reached a biodiversity offset agreement with Ezemvelo “to mitigate residual environmental impacts, by agreeing to implement both estuarine and land-based biodiversity offsets”.
This biodiversity offset agreement is one of the points raised by the CER and the originations it represents in their appeal against the environmental go-ahead for this project.
The CER says there was insufficient consultation over the controversial biodiversity offset, adding it is “shrouded in secrecy and brought in at a very late stage, with no consultation held to explain what this entails”.
“This purported offset mechanism ... whereby the company allegedly bought a game farm (located about 100km inland from Richards Bay, near Ulundi) for Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife is supposed to compensate for the biodiversity loss the project will cause to the sensitive estuarine ecosystem in and around the port,” the CER says.
Karpowership SA responded by saying that biodiversity offsetting is an established and regulated practice in SA with the country’s first National Biodiversity Offset Guideline published for implementation on June 23.
“In its nature, biodiversity offsetting is negotiated and transparent. The environmental assessment reports [...] are public documents which expressly state biodiversity offset in addition to other mitigation measures. In the case of Karpowership SA’s proposed power generation facility in Richards Bay, this is appropriate,” it said.
Other matters raised in the appeal include “the defectiveness of the prescribed public consultation process” and “errors in the climate change impact assessment”.
Public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan said in a written response to a parliamentary question in October that due to the delays the Karpowership SA and other RMIPPPP projects have faced to reached commercial close, the department of forestry, fisheries & the environment as procurer has communicated a long-stop date of December 31 for the RMIPPPP.
That means all the projects under the programme must achieve legal closure by the end of the year or risk losing grid access that was granted as part of the procurement process.
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