NEIL OVERY AND THABO SIBEKO: Shambolic energy planning derails SA’s path to a low-carbon future

Speaking at the National Treasury’s first Climate Resilience Symposium recently, President Cyril Ramaphosa drew attention to the threat climate change poses to the SA economy, noting that it “has a direct and material impact on activity across the economy, increasing the cost of doing business, undermining competitiveness and dampening employment growth”.

Given the seriousness of the threats to the economy as well as to our collective welfare posed by climate change, it is heartening to note that the president recently signed the Climate Change Act into law. Among other things, the act sets out how SA will meet its greenhouse gas emissions targets in terms of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, in the context of a just transition to a low carbon and climate resilient economy and society in SA.

In passing the act Ramaphosa emphasised that its objectives must not be “constrained by policy contradictions”. The act is explicit on this point. Its first stated objective is to “provide for a co-ordinated and integrated response by the economy and society to climate change in accordance with the principles of co-operative governance”. This emphasis on co-ordinated action makes perfect sense because, as the act acknowledges, the effects of climate change “transcends and challenges traditionally sectoral governance approaches”.

Given that between 41% (according to Eskom) and 55% (according to the International Energy Agency) of SA’s greenhouse gas emissions come from electricity generation, “co-ordinated and integrated” policy-making governing how we generate electricity is critical to the success of the act and to SA meeting its international emissions obligations.

Sadly, however, policy development in electricity generation in SA, and in the energy sector more generally, is neither co-ordinated nor integrated. At best is can be described as contradictory, and at worst shambolic. This policy mess is perfectly illustrated by the draft integrated resource plan published earlier this year, which works against a host of other policies in the energy sector.

The purpose of the integrated resource plan is to set out the government’s plans to ensure security of electricity supply, with due consideration for the environment and value for money. Inexplicably, the draft integrated resource plan states that the best way to do this is to artificially limit the amount of renewable energy that can be built, while simultaneously greatly expanding the amount of electricity that will be generated by gas — a fossil fuel that will contribute to SA’s emissions.

This decision to increase electricity generation from fossil gas at the expense of renewables contradicts several government policies and initiatives. For example, it contradicts the entire purpose of government’s just transition framework and just transition investment & implementation plan, and in so doing unravels much of the work and recommendations of the Presidential Climate Commission towards a low-carbon and climate resilient economy and society.

It also directly contradicts the SA renewable energy master plan (released for public comment last July), which “articulates a vision, objectives and an action plan for SA to tap into opportunities provided by renewable energy and battery storage technologies”.

The draft IRP has serious implications for SA’s emissions targets, which are already considered “insufficient” by the Climate Action Trackor, which calculates fair-share contributions to climate action.

While the integrated resource plan boldly claims that SA will still meet its emissions targets if its recommendations are adopted, this assertion is widely disputed by independent modelling. For example, the Presidential Climate Commission reviewed independent emissions benchmark studies for its official response to the integrated resource plan (“PCC recommendations on the IRP2023: March 2024”) and concluded that it “does not effectively address the issues of climate change”.

This finding is especially important because SA’s emissions commitments are due to be tightened in 2025, while modelling shows that electricity sector decarbonisation is the cheapest and most effective way to reduce our emissions.

It is not just in the electricity sector where confused energy policy-making predominates. The Upstream Petroleum Resources Development Bill, which awaits the president’s signature, states that there is a “need to accelerate petroleum exploration and production” in SA.

To this we can add the recent decision to undertake extensive seismic survey work in the Karoo looking for oil and gas, as well as the draft 2024 gas master plan, which states that gas “must be commercialised” in SA. These policies are, of course, completely incompatible with the Climate Change Act’s vision of creating a low carbon and climate resilient economy and society.

As the Presidential Climate Commission accurately said in August, “fragmentation, contrasting policies and contradictory government positions have created policy uncertainty in the country, including around the just transition”. A significant cause of this fragmentation stems from government’s failure to produce an integrated energy plan.

The National Energy Act of 2008 states that an integrated energy plan must “serve as a guide for energy infrastructure investments” and “guide the selection of appropriate technology to meet energy demand”, and should be cognisant of “international commitments”. Based on credible research and to be reviewed and updated annually, it is designed to serve as a road map for SA’s energy choices. Critically, the National Energy Act also states that the integrated energy plan must also be informed “by public comments”.

In 2016 the government produced a draft integrated energy plan that it has yet to finalise. This failure led to legal action (after having spent years asking the government to produce an integrated energy plan) by The Green Connection and the Southern African Faith Communities’ Environment Institute, which compelled Ramaphosa to agree to produce an integrated energy plan by April 2024. Yet to date no plan has been produced.

This failure to publish an integrated energy plan means decisions get taken in the energy sector in the absence of meaningful public scrutiny and in the absence of any “co-ordinated and integrated” vision for SA’s energy future. It is these absences that result in the disastrously inadequate integrated resource plan, the absurdity of Karpowerships, the irrational obsession with nuclear energy, the fantasy of “clean coal”, and the mindless pursuit of oil and gas.

In late August deputy minister of electricity & energy Samantha Graham-Marê stated that a revised integrated resource plan would be completed by the end of 2024, while the integrated energy plan would be completed by mid-2025. So once again the government, in ignoring the provisions of the National Energy Act, has developed energy policies that will inevitably be — to requote Ramaphosa — “constrained by policy contradictions”.

South Africans need to ask whose interests are being served by such incoherent energy planning. It is certainly not the interests of those who seek a just transition to a low carbon, climate resilient future.

• Overy is a research associate in environmental humanities at the University of Cape Town and Sibeko is programmes manager at Earthlife Africa Johannesburg.