GOOD Statement by Roscoe Palm,
GOOD City of Cape Town Councillor
6 August 2026
The leadership of Cape Town’s Energy Portfolio Committee is actively dodging transparency by hiding a massive 174 MW bulk electricity allocation for private data centres completely off the committee’s agenda.
The proposed hyperscale Equinix data centre at King Air Industria will be a massive drain on energy and water, both scarce resources in Cape Town, to build corporate infrastructure that will yield little benefit to ordinary Capetonians.
We are talking about 174 MW of grid capacity, swallowing over 10% of Cape Town’s entire peak demand. This single 24/7 corporate baseload draw uses as much electricity as over 200,000 households.
This never came before the energy portfolio. Attempts by the GOOD Party to raise this at two consecutive portfolio meetings were blocked. Verbal reports were given, only when prompted by the GOOD Party, but the DA-dominated portfolio committee are happy to feign ignorance about this critical issue.
It was quietly slipped through the Municipal Planning Tribunal as a routine rezoning, completely bypassing dedicated energy oversight.
Off-the-cuff verbal assurances do not cut it when locking up a tenth of the city’s power grid. Committee leadership should be taking members and the public into its confidence, not relying on informal brush-offs.
When corporate developments get secret grid guarantees, everyday ratepayers pay the price. The Executive Director and MMC must table a formal, written impact report immediately.
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