President Cyril Ramaphosa’s sense of urgency may deservedly be suspect but there’s little doubt he’s been shaken by the scale of load-shedding the country has been subject to for the past few weeks.
“What the past two weeks have demonstrated is that we need to do more and do so with the utmost urgency,” he wrote in his latest Monday newsletter. “There is no reason why a country like ours — with the skills capabilities and resources we have at our disposal — should have to endure a shortage of electricity.”
Well, duh. They only thing standing between us and electricity is a dimwit government, run by a dimwit party pursuing dimwit policies. But maybe we can get this right. It really isn’t hard.
Ramaphosa’s newsletter was setting us up for the announcement, possibly still this week, of a rapid national programme to install about 10,000MW of renewable power (more than the output of both Medupi and Kusile, two huge dud Eskom coal power plants the utility is still, a decade beyond deadline, trying to complete) and a further 5,000MW of battery storage in just two years.
He has on his table at least five reports from institutions and experts suggesting not only that this is possible, but that it is the only and fast way to stop load-shedding in its tracks.
By far the most dominant plan is the work of Mark Swilling, a highly regarded left-wing academic who not only serves the state as chair of the Development Bank of Southern Africa but also as a commissioner on the National Development Commission, which just endorsed exactly the same plan he has been punting for nearly two months.
Quite when Ramaphosa declares an electricity emergency is not certain. Swilling’s plan needs local content rules on equipment used in the programme removed for three years. That would require the acquiescence of trade, industry & competition minister Ebrahim Patel. His political form suggests he would demand something in return, perhaps some level of power price control to support his interventionist industrial policies, a stance that would cause significant delay.
The great bulk of the capacity would be built on or near Eskom property in Mpumalanga and Limpopo, where connection to the national grid is easiest and where the hardships of decarbonising would be most keenly felt.
Not that 10,000MW is enough. For a future SA it is not even close. But in terms of both affordability and technology it is enough to buy us the time to get ahead of the energy crisis. It would allow Eskom the space to maintain its kit better, and it would allow government — any government — the time to argue and plan for further expansion of new power technologies.
If we do not do this 10,000MW of power and 5,000MW of storage programme now, the experts — including Prof Swilling — argue there is a plausible danger that Eskom could fall so far behind with maintenance that its entire system could fail. It would take the country a decade to recover fully.
Others argue renewables are a chimera, a fool’s errand. They press for nuclear, or gas, or (like Bantu Holomisa recently) more coal. In the face of Russian gas shortages, he noted, the Germans are firing up their coal plants. Why should we be expected to shut ours down?
The answer is easy. The Russian gambit that is starving Europe of gas in retaliation for Western sanctions after the invasion of Ukraine has only one possible outcome: whatever its immediate response, Europe will hasten its search for alternatives to gas and other fossil fuels. For fossil fuels of any kind, the times we live in now are a dead cat bounce. They are finished.
We will know whether Ramaphosa has been fooled by the bouncing cat or been humbled into a fossil compromise by his relentless energy minister, Gwede Mantashe, if gas is included, even in a small way, in the plans he is poised to announce.
“We will soon be completing the detailed work and consultations needed to finalise these further measures,” Ramaphosa wrote on Monday. “We will then, in the coming days, be able to announce a comprehensive set of actions to achieve much faster progress in tackling load-shedding.”
We will see. “There are no easy solutions to our electricity crisis,” he ended. But technically, there are. Politically, it may be more difficult. That is where leadership matters and where it has been found most wanting.
The true guardians of the coming rushed procurement will be the banks. This is a chance for business to redeem itself after its dance with the Guptas. They must simply not finance, directly or indirectly, any installation that uses fossil fuel, no matter the political pressure. The foreign governments promising SA $8.5bn to “transition” from coal to renewables must be watchful too. Remember, when you are doing business with the SA state your partner is in fact the ANC. It needs your money.
For Ramaphosa, an actual working programme, free of government interference and that works and is completed on deadline, could be an 11th-hour political rescue. Two years is what all the experts say he needs. Two years also happens to be the outermost time he has to hold the 2024 general election.
• Bruce is a former editor of Business Day and the Financial Mail.
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