The SA energy sector is by far the country’s largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions and harmful pollution, with almost 90% of electricity produced from burning coal.
Energy generation is the industry that will have to undergo the most dramatic changes if the country is to meet its climate goals set for 2030 and onwards. However, if we are serious about this every sector of the economy will have to contribute.
There has been vocal resistance to SA’s planned shift away from coal-fired to renewable energy for fear of job losses, energy insecurity and the notion of a missed opportunity to exploit coal reserves. There is also resistance from criminal elements, as removing coal supply chains threatens to dismantle patronage and corruption networks.
Clearing these hurdles may be relatively simple compared with other changes — such as what we eat — that will cut closer to the heart of what ails SA.
Here to douse the nation’s braai fires is the latest paper released as part of one of SA’s “most robust, transparent and inclusive climate studies”. The paper, “SA’s Net Zero Transition”, suggests meat-loving SA will have to switch from meat- and starch-heavy diets to a “sustainable diet” high in fruit, vegetables and legumes to achieve sufficient reduction in farming emissions to reach net zero by 2050.
The paper was produced as part of the National Business Initiative, Business Unity SA and Boston Consulting Group’s Climate Pathways & Just Transition study, which is led by a group of more than 30 CEOs based on research undertaken over two years. It assesses what it would take for SA to reach net zero by 2050 and achieve its international commitment to reduce emissions to within a range of 350-million to 420-million tonnes of carbon dioxide by 2030.
A large-scale rollout of renewable energy generation can drive about 60% of the required emissions reduction, but to reach even the least ambitious end of the target range other industries, such as mining, transport, construction and agriculture, will have to change drastically.
For the transport sector this means interventions such as a sales ban on combustion engine vehicles by 2034 and a huge shift to public transport. Under our current circumstances it seems unlikely that we can achieve this. The paper also says the agriculture sector can drive a 4% reduction in total national emissions if there is a significant shift to a diet low in red meat. According to the 2022 Climate Transparency Report, agriculture is responsible for 9% of SA’s greenhouse emissions, and most of this 9% is from methane.
The problem, as the paper points out, is that shifting from a diet dominated by meat and grains to a more environmentally sustainable national diet could cost up to four times more than the average diet for low-income South Africans. An average plate of food in SA consists of 41% starch, 26% meat and 13% vegetables, a study done by Nielsen in 2020 showed.
But averages are a weak measure of reality in a society as unequal as ours. Meat hardly features in the meals of many South Africans, and when times are tough, as they are now, people turn increasingly to the country’s staple food, maize. Bureau for Food & Agricultural Policy research shows that annual per-capita consumption of maize rose from 50kg in 2016 to 55kg in 2022.
According to Stats SA, about a quarter of the population suffers from some form of food insecurity and 15% from a severe lack of food. The great challenge for SA is to ensure the “just transition” is not merely a technical system shift towards a more sustainable and less emissions-intensive society, but a move to a more equal and prosperous society — a just economic transition.
Increasingly it is common cause that SA requires an energy transition away from fossil fuels towards renewable energy sources that do not pollute the air we breathe and water we drink, while creating better opportunities for those who earn a living from fossil fuel industries.
A transition in our food system that addresses the poor diets of many South Africans as well as our emissions commitments will be even harder. If we think our conversations in the dark about phasing out coal are hard, convincing a hungry and struggling society to eat less meat is a fool’s errand no serious SA government would touch.
The solution is altogether harder: SA will eat better and more sustainably when it can afford to. That, as ever, is where the political focus ought to be.
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