Perhaps one of the few remarkable elements of South Africa’s new integrated resource plan (IRP), which emerged in the first few weeks of this year, is the extent to which it concedes that whatever promises the politicians make, our electricity system is broken.
The new IRP — which lays out the country’s energy blueprint until 2050 — concedes that there will be “unserved energy” for the next four years. In other words, despite the frequent promises by energy minister Gwede Mantashe and President Cyril Ramaphosa that load-shedding will soon be a thing of the past, the truth is it’s not going anywhere until 2028 at least.
It’s a remarkable, if frank, admission, and you wonder if the government is hoping none of the people likely to vote in this year’s election will have the endurance to wade through the document. But perhaps it’s a positive step that Mantashe’s department is at least willing to stare reality in the face — even if it’s a grim one in which there’s likely to be a 2,000MW shortfall of power every week this year.
Experts have derided this IRP as an “inadequate” blueprint for an economy that desperately needs to embrace clean energy.
Prof Anton Eberhard, for instance, called it a “Neanderthal plan” and a “stitch-up, with predetermined outcomes in line with what [Mantashe] has been advocating — wishful thinking around improvements in Eskom’s power station performance, delays in coal decommissioning, ‘clean’ coal, nuclear energy, and lots and lots of gas”.
Curiously, the earlier rosy plans to embrace renewables seem to have been subordinated to the deployment of “dispatchable” power generation options and a delay in shutting down coal-fired power stations. After 2030, the focus switches to nuclear, “clean coal” and gas, and renewable energy.
It is hard not to conclude that this IRP indicates a government that has failed to fully grapple with the emergency of our power crisis
When it comes to renewables, this IRP is markedly less ambitious than its 2019 incarnation. Specifically, it plans for about 30% less solar energy by 2030 than the earlier plan and 55% less wind capacity.
The country now has until February 23 to comment on it. Mantashe can expect immense pushback from critics, who will not only question how he arrived at these numbers, but also the dissonance between the political promises made at COP28 last year, and the apparent reluctance to embrace renewables.
It is hard not to conclude that this IRP indicates a government that has failed to fully grapple with the emergency of our power crisis, preferring to instead roll out tired old plans which are now so hopelessly outdated they can’t do the job.
The detachment from reality is just as evident in the briefing after the ANC’s national executive committee meeting, where the governing party lauded the appointment of electricity minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa last year as a “huge boost” in the battle to curb load-shedding.
It’s been anything but — the only game it has changed is that it provides an extra layer to be used in that tedious ANC frolic of booting accountability down the line.
Speaking this week on the government’s plan to end blackouts, Ramokgopa seemed to be as powerless as anyone who’d preceded him.
“The system still remains unreliable,” he said. “I can’t stand here and say to the country there will not be load-shedding going into the future.”
That’s what happens when you approach a crisis without a workable plan. For this reason, the business sector dares not hold its tongue on the inadequacy of this new IRP.
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