South Africa's electricity system facing collapse and Cabinet "must get decisive" – Hilton Trollip, engineer and researcher at UCT's Energy Research Centre
The coal industry is holding South Africa to ransom and preventing it from moving to a low carbon economy, say climate change experts.
And government is using the trade unions' fear of losing coal jobs as a convenient excuse to maintain the status quo of a coal-based economy with high greenhouse gas emissions.
This emerged from a panel discussion of climate change experts who said in January 2019 that Cabinet must scrap its obsolete climate change objectives and "get decisive".
South Africa, with 95% of its electricity generated by coal, has one of the highest per capita carbon emissions in the world. Trollip said even the "grossly inadequate" commitments to cut greenhouse gas emissions had not been implemented.
However, the status quo was not sustainable. Trollip said the country's electricity system was facing collapse. Eskom had massive debt that it had said it could not pay back from revenues.
It would make sense economically to move to renewables on a large scale as the least cost electricity option, and one that would generate jobs, foreign investment and cut emissions, panel members said.
Nicole Loser of the Centre for Environmental Rights said South Africa had no greenhouse gas standards or thresholds. My comment here is this is probably why Volkswagen was never fined in South Africa for exceeding emissions standards for its diesel vehicles.
See https://www.fin24.com/Economy/Eskom/sas-electricity-system-facing-collapse-engineer-20190130
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SA’s electricity system facing collapse – engineer The coal industry is holding South Africa to ransom and preventing it from moving to a low carbon economy, say climate change experts. |