Although many might be eager to see Eskom go away, there are valid reasons for questioning how effective government reforms to the energy sector will actually be. Photo: Waldo Swiegers/Getty Images
Air pollution from Eskom’s ailing fleet of coal-fired power stations will be responsible for 79 500 deaths from 2025 until their end-of-life, under the company’s planned retirement schedule and emission control retrofits.
This is among the key findings of a new report on the health impacts of Eskom’s non-compliance with South Africa’s minimum emission standards (MES) on air quality, which was produced by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air in Finland.
MES are published in terms of the Air Quality Act and stipulate the limits of nitrogen oxides, sulphur dioxide (SO2) and particulate matter that can be emitted from Eskom’s power station stacks.
The report projects emissions, air quality effects and the resulting health and economic impacts of air pollution from Eskom’s coal power plant fleet under different scenarios of compliance with MES.
Eskom has stated that to comply with the standards will cost it R300 billion and “will not add any capacity to the national grid”.
‘Impossible situation’
MES for combustion installations were issued in 2010, with a phased introduction where existing sources had to meet a more lenient set of standards by 2015 and a more stringent set of standards by 2020. “Most importantly, these standards would require, for the first time, coal-burning facilities to install sulphur dioxide emissions controls,” the report said.
After the issuance of the standards by the department of forestry, fisheries and the environment, Eskom, as the country’s largest emitter, failed to initiate the required planning and implementation of the emission control retrofits, and government authorities failed to monitor Eskom’s actions, “leading to an impossible situation where there was no more time to retrofit the fleet.
“Because of this, Eskom was granted postponements to the standards until 2025. For plants planned to retire by 2030, compliance with the standards was suspended. The postponements were time-limited but Eskom made it clear that it did not intend to comply even after the deadlines ran out.”
In 2020, the emission limit for SO2 was further weakened from 500 to 1,000 mg/Nm³ , “potentially enabling the standards to be met using emission technology with lower investment costs”.
Compared to best international practice, MES are highly lenient, the report said. “For example, the European Union now requires old coal-fired power plants to limit SO2 in flue gases to an annual average of 95 mg/Nm³, less than one tenth of the limit value in South Africa.
As a result of the failure to act on its SO2 emissions, Eskom has become the largest power sector emitter of sulphur dioxide in the world. “Other major emitters, particularly Chinese utilities, have carried out major retrofit programmes and successfully reduced their SO2 emissions.”
Main conclusions
Among the key findings of the centre’s modelling is that Eskom’s full compliance with MES at all plants that are scheduled to operate beyond 2030 would avoid a projected 2 300 deaths per year from air pollution and economic costs of R42 billion a year starting from 2025.
The researchers found that Eskom’s retrofit plan only realises one quarter of the health benefits associated with compliance with MES, because of the “almost complete failure” to address SO2 emissions.
SO2 is the pollutant with by far the largest health impacts from Eskom’s power plants, because of the formation of secondary PM2.5. These are fine inhalable particles with diameters generally 2.5 micrometres and smaller. The average human hair is about 70 micrometres in diameter.
On a cumulative basis until the end-of-life of the power plants, compliance would avoid a projected 34 400 deaths from air pollution and economic costs of R620 bn. Other avoided health impacts would include 140 000 asthma emergency room visits, 5 900 new cases of asthma in children, 57 000 preterm births, 35.0 million days of work absence, and 50 000 years lived with disability.
The report found that if the compliance deadline was delayed to 2030 instead of 2025, compliance with the emission limits would still avoid a projected 26 400 deaths from air pollution and economic costs of R470 billion.
Requiring the application of best available control technology at all plants, instead of the current MES, by 2030, would avoid 57 000 deaths from air pollution and economic costs of R1 000 billion compared to the Eskom plan.
Pending appeals on MES
In August, Minister of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment Barbara Creecy appointed an expert panel to advise her on pending appeals by Eskom and civil society groups regarding Eskom’s applications for postponement and suspension of compliance with air pollution standards.
This follows the 2021 decisions by the national air quality officer refusing several of Eskom’s applications for further postponements from compliance with MES air pollution standards. For most of its stations, Eskom has stated that it does not plan to retrofit its power stations by the deadline to meet the standards because of costs and capacity constraints.
Eskom did not respond to the Mail & Guardian but said in February last year that its applications for postponement were to request to emit “alternative” emission levels.
“Eskom is asking the authorities for a sustainable solution, which reduces pollution and its impact on health but considers financial constraints, the ability to execute emission reduction projects on time and the negative impact such technology may have on the environment, for example, increased water use, millions of tonnes of waste produced each year and increased carbon dioxide emissions,” it said.
Lauri Myllyvirta, lead analyst at the centre, said: “The misleading claims from Eskom that they have any kind of an ‘alternative’ plan worth the name is exactly why it was important to do this report. Eskom’s plan is a wholesale failure to address the enormous SO2 emissions, which make Eskom the world’s largest power sector polluter and dominate the health impacts of the company’s coal power fleet.
“If the company fails to install any kind of controls for SO2 in its power plants, including those that are still planned to run for decades, anything else is moving the deck chairs on the Titanic.”
Legal submission
Earthlife Africa and groundWork, represented by the Centre for Environmental Rights (CER), recently included the centre’s study in a legal submission to the expert panel on air pollution. They have called on it to ensure that Eskom is not allowed to further postpone its compliance with MES on air quality, particularly in the Mpumalanga Highveld, an air pollution hotspot, which is home to 12 of Eskom’s power stations.
In their submission, the civil groups noted that the process is taking place against a “backdrop of long delays” and a “history of non-compliance” from Eskom.
“It now finds itself in a conundrum of its own making, and communities should not have to pay the price of that. Nor should it lie with our clients to provide solutions to Eskom’s self-made crisis. It is unacceptable that people’s lives, health and rights are prejudiced on a daily basis in a constitutional democracy where clean energy alternatives are readily available.”
They described how, because of Eskom’s non-compliance with MES, constitutional rights “are being breached in circumstances where Eskom and other industries are contributing to a public health crisis, causing billions in health costs, and contributing to death and illness”.
The landmark Deadly Air judgement in March last year held that the section 24 right to an environment that is not harmful to health and wellbeing is immediately realisable, said CER attorney Ntombi Maphosa, in a statement. “There is limited flexibility in the recommendations that the forum can make to the Minister as the law is quite clear that compliance with the air pollution standards is not negotiable.”
Thomas Mnguni, the coal campaigner for groundWork, said the report shows that if Eskom were to comply, “there are chances that it could save people’s lives and … it’s also about the working hours people lose, which makes them unproductive”.
Eskom, he said, has known about the pollution standards for more than 10 years. “It has consistently sought to avoid compliance and deferred the necessary steps to reduce dangerous air pollutant emissions. Now Eskom says that it cannot comply with these standards and that compliance would mean further harmful load-shedding. Eskom is asking people to choose between their and their families’ health and keeping the lights on. This is unacceptable.”
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