The energy crisis was first on the agenda for President Jacob Zuma’s 2015 State of the Nation Address – and rightly so, according to Earthlife Africa.
Yet the organisation is disappointed that the president shed little light for the electricity-strapped South African public on how the Eskom crisis would be solved.
Makoma Lekalakala, programme director at Earthlife Africa Johannesburg, found the 2015 State of the Nation Address disjointed. “We are facing a crisis, yet the president offered a business as usual approach.”
“President Zuma was applauded by the house for saying that ‘we are a nation at work’. But the nation cannot work under the current oppressive load shedding. The government’s plan, in the short term, is to bail out the embattled utility.
“In the longer term, the plan is to improve generation capacity by introducing coal generated IPPs, exploiting shale gas and procuring nuclear energy. While these polluting solutions may offer South African citizens low skilled and underpaid ‘work opportunities’, they also mean resource depletion, capital flight, water shortages and increased unequal wealth distribution.”
The president acknowledged the recent success of renewable projects in contributing to the electricity grid; praising the Sera wind farm in particular.
But, says Lekalakala, the challenges that the coal fired power stations, Medupi and Kusile face were not mentioned. And, instead of offering achievable, sustainable solutions to the electricity crisis, the president informed South Africans that in the long term nuclear energy would fill the electricity gap to replace the failing cold-fired power stations.
The president made other hints that nuclear energy was first on the political wish list, despite an unclear nuclear procurement policy and an unfinished national energy plan, Lekalakala points out.
Energy Policy Officer at Earthlife Africa Johannesburg, Dominique Doyle’s response to the 2015 SONA is: “The government claims that the electricity crisis is its top priority, but this commitment did not show in the president’s speech.
“If we had heard that speech last year, we would be none the wiser. What the speech does show is that the government is spending too much time pondering procuring massively expensive and unnecessary Russian nuclear reactors instead of meeting urgent socio-economic development needs.”
