A new policy statement on energy and the environment, released on Tuesday by the Democratic Alliance (DA), calls for a new ministry to be created which will combine energy management with climate change.
The party is also proposing to decouple minerals from energy, which the party’s environment spokesperson Gareth Morgan said “reverses a perverse relationship that has existed for decades in this country”.
Mitigation action for climate change may not be enough to reverse the harm already done, Morgan added, saying: “The reality is that we must also adapt to what cannot be reversed, and our adaptation measures will involve increased investment in water infrastructure, more rigorous planning for extreme weather events and increased use of agricultural extension workers to aid rural communities with food production under conditions of greater climate uncertainty.”
The DA would also ban mining in any national or provincial parks or within coastal property “under any circumstances”.
Morgan added: “Not all land must be regarded as suitable for development, and arrangements such as land swaps must be arranged for privately owned sensitive land.”
The DA’s spokesperson on energy, Hendrik Schmidt, said that the party wants to unbundle power transmission from power generation in order to make it easier for other sources of electricity to be fed into the grid.
“Conditions that enable regulated third parties such as foreign and domestic independent power producers (IPPs) equal access to the system must be created,” Schmidt said. “IPPs will be increasingly attracted to the sector if Eskom does not own the national grid.”
Schmidt also said the DA would revoke Eskom’s designation as the single buyer of electricity. “Because the IPPs must sell their electricity to Eskom, this is a disincentive to attracting investment in private power production.” — I-Net Bridge