Mantashe accedes to DA request and extends deadline for public comments on the draft IRP 2023

5 February 2024

The Minister of Mineral Resources and Energy, Gwede Mantashe, has acceded to a DA request to extend the deadline for public comments on the draft Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) 2023 to 23 March 2024 from the previously advertised deadline of 23 February 2024.

The DA welcomes the deadline extension as it will give all stakeholders an opportunity to properly interrogate the underlying assumptions and projections made in the IRP 2023, and to make substantive comments based on the evaluation thereof.

On 19 January 2024, the DA wrote to Mantashe asking for an extension of the public comments deadline for the IRP 2023. We pointed out that the release of the IRP 2023 had been inexplicably delayed and the deadline given did not provide enough time for stakeholders to properly review the merits of the energy plan.

The DA is working on its own submissions on the draft IRP 2023 and we will use the opportunity to highlight the grave inconsistencies that currently define the current version, from a high Energy Availability Factor by 2030 that is not matched by improvements in generation capacity to claims of lowering energy costs while proposing procurement from expensive sources such as nuclear and gas.

Issued by Kevin Mileham, DA Shadow Minister of Mineral Resources and Energy, 5 February 2024