City of Cape Town at the forefront of ending loadshedding and fighting climate change
18 April 2023
The Democratic Alliance is taking bold and unprecedented action to deliver real solutions to the national energy crisis, while also ensuring that we contribute our fair share in combatting the looming global climate crisis.
The announcement by the City of Cape Town that it is proceeding with a new R1.2 billion solar PV and battery storage project is a welcome development in the midst of crippling rolling blackouts across the country.
As a member of the C40 Cities International Climate Leadership Group, Cape Town will receive technical and financial support from the C40 Cities Finance Facility (CFF) to bring this project to reality, accelerating the shift to green energy over the next 3-years to become the first major Metro in the country to end load-shedding. This project will add to the 500MW dispatchable energy tender which the City of Cape Town brought to market last month.
The culminative effect of these projects and other bold initiatives will deliver a real solution to load-shedding: the R288m Power Heroes Program, the R53m Cash for Power Payments program, the R1 Billion-Rand refurbishment of the Steenbras Pumped Storage Facility and R220m to buy power from Independent Power Producers will place Cape Town on the path to energy security. With R2.3 Billion being invested in energy resilience and energy security in the medium-term, Capetonians have a compelling reason to look forward to a future in their City.
Ending rolling-blackouts through an urgent shift to renewable energy sources is now the only viable pathway that can lead South Africa out of this load-shedding nightmare. While the International Energy Agency (IEA) has already concluded that “solar power is now the cheapest electricity source in human history” it is also the quickest energy solution to deploy in the shortest time-frame possible, with an average build-time of approximately 18 months.
While we edge closer to Stage 8 load-shedding, the new Minister of Electricity seems all but determined to ignore the most obvious and readily available solutions to our energy crisis, and instead wants to commit South Africa to making the very costly and irrational mistake of prolonging the life-spans of crumbling thermal coal-power stations around the country, which cannot and will not meet ever meet our baseload energy requirements again. We have waited nearly 17-years for South Africa’s thermal coal power stations to come to the rescue and to end load-shedding, but we now have all the evidence we need to conclusively say that they are part of the problem, not the solution.
The present energy availability factor (EAF) of the national thermal coal power fleet continues to decline, meaning we are increasingly getting less and less energy out of our coal power stations, all while South Africans are expected to pay ever increasing amounts for energy that is frequently not even accessible to them, and given that almost all of them are nearing the end of their planned lifespans it will require bankrupting the country to maintain them and to keep them running longer than is absolutely necessary.
Every single thermal coal power station in our country does also not meet our legislated minimum air quality emission standards, placing them in violation of our environmental protection laws and Section 24 of the Constitution.
To prolong their lifespans therefore also means killing many South Africans, and making even more sick with chronic illnesses due to the effects of air pollution. According to one CSIR study 5,000 South Africans die annually because the national government has failed to enforce our minimum air quality emission standards. Beyond the contribution that fossil fuel energy sources make to observed global warming, the “Deadly Air Case” which is presently before the courts again also paints a compelling reason alone for consigning coal to history
In contrast to this, the DA offers a hopeful vision of the future, with reliable energy from clean and renewable sources which does not kill people or make them sick.
While load-shedding cripples the economy, there is presently little to be optimistic about for the rest of the country.
The City of Cape Town is now well-and-truly South Africa’s City of Hope, showing what can be achieved by a government that is committed to protecting its residents and improving people’s lives.
Traverse Le Goff is a DA Member of the National Assembly, Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Mineral Resources and Energy.
