Outa asks court to overturn granting of Karpowership licence

The Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (Outa) has filed a legal challenge to overturn the National Energy Regulator of SA’s approval of Karpowership’s electricity generation licences.

The floating power ships are expected to be docked in the harbours of Richards Bay, Coega and Saldanha Bay. Karpowership is, however, yet to receive environmental approvals from the government. Litigation from an unsuccessful bidder has also held up the deal.

On Thursday, Outa said its application was filed on Tuesday in the Pretoria high court against Nersa, four Karpowership companies, the minister of mineral resources and energy, the environment ministry and Eskom.

“We say Nersa failed to act in the interests of SA, failed to provide adequate reasons and failed to consider that the Karpowership 20-year ‘emergency’ contracts will not resolve load-shedding,” said Outa.

“It will take the ships at least a year to supply electricity to the SA grid — so the spin that this is something that can help us now is misleading.”

The deal ties the country into a 20-year contract, costing more than R218bn, Outa said.

“If the Karpowership contract goes ahead, the price of electricity will go even higher, having a huge impact on the pockets of electricity users and SA taxpayers,” the organisation said.

Business Day reported recently that the department of mineral resources and energy and energy had pushed back the deadline for the closure of financial agreements for the winning bidders of its emergency power procurement programme to May.

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