OP-ED: Power cuts will stifle South Africa’s post-Covid economic recovery

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Load shedding is expected to continue for several years as Eskom grapples with ageing infrastructure and a legacy of neglect and mismanagement. Private electricity generation will ease the pain.

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Eskom’s unexpected escalation of load shedding this week has confirmed that South Africa’s post-Covid-19 economic recovery will be throttled by energy constraints, and that unless swift action is taken to support private electricity generation, crippling power cuts will continue for years.

Eskom insists that its new programme of stepped-up maintenance, which aims to address decades of neglect and mismanagement, will end load shedding within 18 months. But it is increasingly clear that this target will not be met, given the scale of problems at its poorly performing coal-fired power stations.

“South Africa has reached a stage where the country simply doesn’t have enough generating capacity which is reliable and which is going to enable the economy not only to recover from Covid-19, but to make any sort of progress over the next 10 years,” says Roger Baxter, CEO of the Minerals Council of South Africa.

“It’s a burning platform that we are on – we need to be moving faster, we need to be doing more,” CSIR chief engineer Jarred Wright said during a presentation of research on the crisis. “An urgent response is needed to both ensure short-term adequacy and to get South Africa on the path to long-term adequacy.”

The third step identified by the CSIR is implementation of the department’s latest Integrated Resource Plan , a long-term strategy for the country’s future energy mix that was released last October – eight years behind schedule.

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