The current Eskom application for a 35% electricity tariff increase, brought before the National Energy Regulator of South Africa (NERSA), is in fact null-and-void as the application does not include enough renewable energy sources as required by law.
Any application brought before NERSA must comply with several requirements, one of them being the amount of renewable energy which Eskom will produce as part of its total electricity generation. The current 35% application does not comply with the amount of renewable energy required, as stipulated by the Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) and as required by the Electricity Regulation Act.
This can only mean that the NERSA hearings calling for public input are a complete farce as NERSA will now be forced to reject the 35% application on a legal basis, allowing Eskom to simply revert back to its original application of 45% requiring another round of hearings.
It is also highly suspicious that the IRP, stipulating the new energy requirements, was only signed into law on 16 December 2009 and only published in the Government Gazette on 31 December 2009. It creates the impression that the Department of Energy is somehow complicit in the 35% farce.
This chain of events is simply unacceptable and suggests that Eskom has little real interest in public debate, transparency and accountability, indeed, if the 35% recommendation is rejected one could argue that Eskom would have effectively misled the country on energy matters directly impacting on economic growth and job creation.
Eskom needs to produce enough electricity for South Africa's economy to function properly. If it cannot do that the consequences will be catastrophic. So the South African public is caught between a rock and a hard place - on the one hand we need to do whatever it takes to ensure that we have enough electricity, on the other hand they are being forced to carry the cost of an administration that has grossly mismanaged our electricity infrastructure. Against that background, however, the Democratic Alliance does not believe Eskom has done everything in its power to keep the proposed tariff hikes as low as possible. This most recent debacle is yet further evidence of their failure to properly handle this matter.
The DA will ask the Ministers of Energy and of Public Enterprises to respond publicly to these facts as a matter of urgency - Eskom has a penchant for leaving South Africa in the dark, and this cannot be allowed to happen again.
Statement issued by Manie van Dyk, MP, Democratic Alliance shadow minister of public enterprises, January 28 2010
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