President Ramaphosa can help us end load-shedding with this 10-point plan
11 July 2022
The power situation in South Africa is now a fully-fledged socio-economic crisis. We need urgent, strong and clear leadership that shows Government has a plan to end load-shedding and achieve energy security.
In Cape Town, we have begun to procure additional capacity from Independent Power Producers (IPPs) to alleviate the burden on Eskom and end load-shedding here over time. This will, in turn, improve the situation nationally. But we need the National Government to help us bring more capacity online, quicker.
I urge President Ramaphosa to immediately announce a series of decisive steps to bring this emergency to an end as soon as possible:
1. Abolish the 100MW licensing threshold for embedded generation and ensure a registration period for IPPs not exceeding 14 days. Not only is this threshold arbitrary, but it makes little financial sense. Due to economies of scale, the optimal size for new energy projects is far larger than this, and larger projects offer cheaper electricity per unit.