Mixed reaction to Ramaphosa’s energy plan
President Cyril Ramaphosa’s announcement for new generating capacity in the energy sector has drawn mixed reaction.
Ramaphosa detailed his much-anticipated economic recovery plan at a joint sitting of Parliament on Thursday.
Among key interventions, Ramaphosa reiterated to the legislature that government would set out to achieve sufficient, secure and reliable energy supply within two years.
Econometrix chief economist Azar Jammine believes Ramaphosa’s recovery plan could end up boosting the country’s bottom line.
“There was nothing that wasn’t really expected. The plan had been moved and there were bits of it that had been spoken about and discussed for a long, long time now, but I suppose it does contain fairly positive aspects, if implemented.
“The decision to free up the electricity sector and being independent power producers, if implemented, will help not only make the sector more competitive but also enable South Africa’s electricity to be entrenched,” Jammine added.
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Ramaphosa detailed the plan during a joint sitting of Parliament on Thursday, saying it will focus on four key priorities. "To reindustrialise our economy, focusing on growing small businesses, to accelerate economic reforms to unlock investment and growth, to fight crime and corruption and to improve the capability of the state."
Last month the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy gazetted new regulations to procure close to 12 000 megawatts of power from independent power producers.
The gazette marked the start of a bidding process to provide the new electricity, relying a great deal on solar and wind power.
But energy expert Ted Blom has his reservations.
“Eleven gigawatts is more than two Medupis, so we’re not talking about mickey mouse programmes, we’re talking about massive programmes. They’re not going to be overnight and hopefully they won’t appear full of corruption and inefficiency.
“The problem with renewable energy is that it’s not dispatchable, in other words you cannot book it ahead of time. You can’t say ‘tomorrow morning 6 o’clock they’ll be sunshine and we will start the mines or the smelters or the bakery’ or whatever it is and that’s the false promise of non-renewable, non-dispatchable energy,” Blom explains.
He adds: “You can’t build the South African economy on non-dispatchable energy.”
Listen to Blom below:
