GOOD Statement by Brett Herron,
GOOD Secretary-General & Member of Parliament
17 September 2022
South Africa’s energy crisis continues to devastate South African livelihoods along with the country’s struggling economy.
The announcement by Eskom, that due to the breakdown of five generating units overnight, Stage 5 loadshedding will be implemented until 05:00 on Monday is disheartening and debilitating. It’s a reminder that despite the availability of skills, technology and alternatives we are still a long way from a stable energy supply.
The threat that higher stages of “loadshedding” may be rolled out at short notice makes it clear that our electricity generation capacity is still far too precarious.
Earlier this week we said that amid the darkness there are reasons to be hopeful that we are heading in a better direction towards energy and environmental sustainability.
But we need to start implementing plans with speed and efficacy, because the longer we wait, the closer the ever-increasing stages of so-called “loadshedding” are pushing South Africa to the brink of disaster.
We need to rapidly fix infrastructure and address maintenance backlogs, continue cutting red tape and unnecessary restrictions for additional supply and urgently increase renewable energy generation along with the necessary financial assistance mechanisms to speed this up.
And in order to increasing renewable energy in a manner which is just, we need to urgently start with projects such as the reskilling of Komati Power Station workers.
These measures are unavoidable and key.
Furthermore, there is the EU and UK Just Energy Transition Partnership’s $8.5bn guarantee to help address our dependence on coal.
But we still need to finalise a plan in order to accept the financing before November’s COP27 climate summit.
South Africa is running out of time. We need to act with urgency.
Media Enquiries:
Brett Herron, GOOD Secretary-General & Member of Parliament
Cell: 0825183264
Email: bretth@forgood.org.za
Janke Tolmay, GOOD Media Manager
Cell: 0733671223
Email: janke@forgood.org.za