GOOD statement by Brett Herron,
GOOD: Secretary-General & Member of Parliament
25 July 2022
As the GOOD party, we welcome the President’s announcements of a significant change in our energy supply regime.
It is common sense that adding extra electricity production capacity, diversifying the source of our electricity and stabilising the supply from the current Eskom supply fleet has been the urgent interventions we have needed.
The President has announced interventions that will address these persistent, but obvious, failures that South Africans have endured for far longer than we ever needed to.
South Africans have endured electricity blackouts, euphemistically called loadshedding, for fifteen years. We have suffered enough.
Each time our national electricity grid has teetered on the edge of a total shutdown, we have been placated with words and promises that sounded like our government was acting out of a sense of urgency.
Clearly the urgency that was communicated in the past dissipated as soon as that period of loadshedding subsided.
We have to work together to ensure that the interventions announced tonight materialise and that the urgency does not subside with the subsidence of the current loadshedding crisis.
The fastest way to add capacity is through the addition of renewable energy.
The construction of nuclear and fossil fuel power stations would take between 5 and 20 years to complete. Whilst relatively large-scale renewable energy generating plants have been added to grids, in other developing world countries, within months. Adding renewables would also contribute to our international obligations to meet climate change agreements.
The best way to diversify our source of supply is to increase the supply from private power producers – independent power producers. The regulatory threshold for embedded generation by private producers is in the hands of government to change and we welcome the lifting of the threshold completely.
We welcome also the decision to import surplus electricity supply from our neighbouring countries, Botswana and Zambia, as well as the decision that Eskom will procure more power directly from independent providers who are generating excess.
Stabilising our fleet of coal powered stations, which have too many breakdowns too frequently, requires skills. We have access to some of the best skills in the world through our membership of BRICS and through our good relationships with important international trading partners. We thank those experts, retired and who’ve moved onto other electrical engineering roles, who have stepped forward to assist Eskom to stabilise the supply from our existing fleet of power stations.
The President’s commitments to end load-shedding must be implemented without delay if we are really going to provide a stable electricity supply and put our economy on a road to job-creating recovery.
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