POLITICS LIVE: Minister ignored her own panel to push through nuclear option
This from a story by Carol Paton on the front page of Business Day:A panel of experts appointed by Energy Minister Tina Joemat-Pettersson told public hearings on the Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) in Ekurhuleni on Wednesday that their advice had been ignored to force nuclear energy into the plan.A task team for the 40-strong panel, which was headed by Mike Levington, says that the Department of Energy’s decision to impose artificial constraints on how much renewable energy can be built — as well as the use of outdated prices — had allowed nuclear energy into the model.The result of this distortion was that the IRP, which will determine SA’s future energy mix, did not recommend the lowest-cost option for the generation of electricity in the long term. A lowest-cost option, said Levington, would not include nuclear in the plan, which projects energy needs until 2050.It is abundantly clear that the push for nuclear energy driven by Joemat-Pettersson and Eskom is not aligned with even t...
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