Perhaps one of the few remarkable elements of South Africa’s new integrated resource plan (IRP), which emerged in the first few weeks of this year, is the extent to which it concedes that whatever promises the politicians make, our electricity system is broken.

The new IRP — which lays out the country’s energy blueprint until 2050 — concedes that there will be “unserved energy” for the next four years. In other words, despite the frequent promises by energy minister Gwede Mantashe and President Cyril Ramaphosa that load-shedding will soon be a thing of the past, the truth is it’s not going anywhere until 2028 at least...

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