ELECTRICITY GENERATION
Unions’ focus on coal jobs hampers plans for renewable energy future
With wind and solar costs declining, the government should retrain workers in other new job categories, writes Colin Wood
If not managed properly, the vital political debate in SA over the role of solar and wind technologies in the future energy mix has the potential to be stymied by load-shedding at the behest of the National Union of Metalworkers of SA (Numsa). The lack of trust and understanding on the part of local trade unions about the government’s well-intentioned initiative to take us down the global path with respect to renewable resources is a serious challenge. The rest of the world is fast embracing what the Bloomberg New Energy Finance Outlook 2018 calls the new mantra for decarbonising electricity generation: "50 by 50" (50% of the world’s energy to come from solar and wind energy by 2050). This dramatic shift is being driven by cheap solar photovoltaic (PV) and wind technologies and falling battery costs. The cost of an average PV plant is expected to fall a further 70% by 2050, and the outlook predicts wind to decline another 60% by 2050. PV and wind are already cheaper than building ne...
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