ROELOF BOTHA: Time to say goodbye to coal, and hello to sunshine

Outgoing Eskom CEO André de Ruyter should receive an order of merit for his contribution to stabilising the SA electricity network.

In sharp contrast to mineral resources & energy minister Gwede Mantashe’s demeaning criticism of De Ruyter, public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan has paid tribute to De Ruyter for the sacrifices he made in moving from the private to the public sector and for giving his all to the strategic national project aimed at restoring adequate energy.

Importantly for the quest to reduce load-shedding, Gordhan has acknowledged the government’s failure to ensure that more generation was added in line with De Ruyter’s consistent call for the installation of 4,000MW-6,000MW of non-Eskom generation to be speeded up. These calls fell on deaf ears at the department of mineral resources & energy.

Three of De Ruyter’s outstanding achievements at Eskom were, first, to restore  preventative maintenance as one of the utility’s major priorities. Second, he provided his full support to meet the urgent need to speed up the transition to renewable energy as well as the deregulation required for its success in supplementing electricity supply.

A third commendable achievement, which has important implications for the inevitable emphasis on renewable energy, is De Ruyter’s comprehensive investigation into the nature of regular outages at power station units. Unsurprisingly, it was concluded that a vicious combination of vandalism, corruption, sabotage and theft conspired over many years to render SA’s energy utility incapable of meeting the country’s electricity demand.

The root causes of the problems identified by De Ruyter are linked to the deployment of incompetent and corrupt officials at virtually all levels of management at Eskom, with private companies also part of a Mafia-type network. These problems are pervasive and also involve a shocking maintenance backlog caused by previous members of Eskom’s board and executive management.

Furthermore, it has become clear that serious design flaws at the Medupi and Kusile power stations, combined with shoddy workmanship, lack of sophisticated security systems and a lack of technical and management expertise in certain areas, will continue to place pressure on electricity generation for many years to come.

In the foreword to the fifth volume of The Sustainable Energy Resource Handbook, published in 2011, the department of mineral resources & energy committed itself to 12 strategies to ensure security of energy supply in SA. Not a single one has been implemented successfully.

In two critical areas — meeting renewable energy targets and maintaining electricity infrastructure — the failure has been catastrophic, leading directly to the electricity rationing that is now wreaking havoc in the lives of all SA citizens.

So why did the department lead the country up the garden path? In addition to a large measure of incompetence and overregulation (as confirmed publicly by a high court judge), it was simply because former president Jacob Zuma and his inner circle involved had their greedy eyes fixed on an unaffordable nuclear energy deal with Russia valued at more than R1.1-trillion. Nhlanhla Nene, finance minister at the time, was fired for pointing out the absurdity and fiscal unaffordability of this project.

The government’s deliberate decision under Zuma to halt the renewable energy programme for five years between 2013 and 2018 is one of the main reasons for the occurrence of load-shedding today.

South Africans from all walks of life will continue to pay a heavy price for the mismanagement of the public sector at large during the disastrous “Zupta” era, especially in having to contend with the effects of inadequate electricity supply, decaying road and rail infrastructure and some of the most inefficient harbours in the world.

Solar power to the rescue

In devising a pragmatic strategy for the repair and renewal of the country’s logistics networks the number one priority should be the rapid investment in solar power on an unprecedented scale.

In the absence of sufficient energy, roads will continue to crumble, hospitals will not be able to switch on life-supporting equipment, skills development will be thwarted, food insecurity will set in, leading to malnutrition, and economic production will be severely curtailed.

The economy simply cannot wait for the government’s dismal failures over a period of two decades in expediting the expansion of renewable energy.

The case for solar power taking the lead is hardly contestable. The sun, directly or indirectly, is the source of all the energy available on earth. According to the US department of energy, the amount of sunlight that strikes the earth’s surface in 90 minutes is enough to accommodate the entire world’s energy consumption for a full year.

Data published by the International Renewable Energy Agency confirms the relentless downward trend in the cost of solar photovoltaic (PV) electricity – in sharp contrast to the rapid rise in the cost of electricity generated by coal-fired power stations.

Saving the planet

Apart from representing a formidable strategy to counter global warming and environmental decay, solar power is destined to eventually become the cheapest source of energy, and the global industry employed more than 5-million people in 2021. Further fossil fuel production and rising emissions could soon overtake the ability of many communities around the world to adapt to the consequences of ever-increasing climate disasters.

According to recent research by Urban_Econ, Nikela and Blue Horizon, SA already possesses a well-developed solar photovoltaic (PV) industry, with close to 750 companies employing about 20,000 people.

It is now up to the government to assemble a team of experts on solar PV to guide and oversee a concerted solar power drive, working closely with the Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme and the presidency in devising a method to prevent delays in decision-making — even if this relegates the department of mineral resources & energy to observer status.

Harnessing the immense power of the sun via close co-operation between the private sector and Eskom, including a further healthy dose of deregulation, could well put paid to excessive load-shedding within a couple of years.

• Dr Botha is economic adviser to the Optimum Group.