Talk, talk, talk and nothing
Energy expert Hilton Trollip says that electricity minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa’s plans are rehashed, and he lacks the executive powers to execute them – leaving him as a type of politically-appointed CEO of Eskom.
Speaking to ENCA, Trollip, a fellow at UCT’s global risk governance programme, said that nothing has been done to resolve South Africa’s electricity crisis since Ramokgopa’s appointment, and legally, the powers to effect any changes still sit within the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy.
“If you look at what’s actually been done – nothing. (Just) talk talk talk,” he said.
Trollip said that the electricity minister’s latest “plan” to resolve load shedding by extending the life of coal power stations is nothing new, and also won’t work.
He noted that energy and mineral resources minister Gwede Mantashe gave a detailed briefing in 2022 on how he would fix South Africa’s energy crisis.
Subsequently, the electricity minister was appointed, went on a grand tour of all the power stations, and returned with what is essentially the exact same plan.
“In my view this plan can’t and won’t work. The electricity minister took this plan to Cabinet yesterday, and Cabinet said, well, ‘come back later’. So it’s just talk, talk, talk,” Trollip said.
Notably, Trollip said that the electricity minister doesn’t have the necessary powers to execute the plan. He said the country has the Electricity Regulation Act, which gives the energy minister (Mantashe) extensive powers.
Ramokgopa’s executive powers are not clearly defined, and this is leading to tensions among the three executives currently in charge of handling Eskom and its various crises.
Trollip said that as the laws stand, it is currently Mantashe’s responsibility to resolve the crisis.
“Minister Mantashe is Constitutionally and legally required to do certain things, and he is simply not doing them. The electricity minister appears to be a political appointee as the new CEO (of Eskom).
“There’s an acting CEO, there’s no new CEO, and (Ramokgopa) has tried to go to Eskom and throw his weight around ,” he said.
Regardless of who’s in charge, though, the expert said that “people need to do something in the physical world, (and) there’s nothing happening.”
Trollip said that given the current impasse and lack of direction, nothing will be done in the coming year to resolve the power issues, either.
“There’s no substance to the plan. Me and other independent experts – who have no political skin in the game – have said that these 80 big generators, their energy availability factor will just continue to deteriorate as they get older and as Eskom, which is really under pressure, struggles to maintain them.
“We’ve seen nothing of substance on the table, so things will simply deteriorate. That’s unfortunately not news these days. It’s been normalised that we’re on stage 4 to 6 and that it’s probably going to get worse. You can’t make news of a very slow train crash.”
Renewables vs coal
Trollip said that the ongoing debate around coal versus renewables is not really a debate. Instead, it’s a “red herring” to create a “false debate” to give root to coal proponents, he said.
“As an engineer and economic system modeller, the cheapest, fastest way to solve the energy problem is to put solar and wind on the grid as soon as possible. Even the government’s Integrated Resource Plan 2019 modelling showed this. It’s incontrovertible,” he said.
While environmental factors are in the mix – South Africa, like the rest of the world, has to decrease emissions radically and quickly – this is not really relevant to the ongoing “debates” in South Africa, Trollip said.
“To fix the system, the fastest, quickest way is a whole lot of wind and solar. It is the energy ministry’s responsibility to do that,” he said. However, because of the department’s support of coal, and the energy minister’s own statements in support of coal, this is not happening.
“Because he (Mantashe) can’t get his coal, we can’t get electricity,” Trollip said.
Trollip is not alone in describing the coal-extension plan as without substance. Intellidex analyst Peter Attard Montalto also poked holes in the idea, noting that the country neither has the time nor resources to accomplish it.
The analyst noted that Eskom has already calculated that it will cost R400 billion to extend some of the fleet for a further five years. This is money that no one has, and there is no room to raise these funds.
Making the suggestion even more nonsensical is that it would take – at best – five years to execute.
“You would still need to procure the fastest and cheapest electricity in those five years anyway: renewables, battery, a little bit of gas, rooftop solar and so on. The minister’s job is to end load-shedding, yet his plan would fail to do that even if the money was available from the magic money tree,” Attard Montalto said.
Read: The fight for control of Eskom is on