Other sources of air pollution such as coal, wood and paraffin increase when the coal-fired power stations are down. (Waldo Swiegers/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Sitting outside his home in Middelburg in the polluted Mpumalanga Highveld on Monday morning, Thomas Mnguni could see some of his neighbours burning coal in their houses. His area had just endured two hours of load-shedding.
People will depend on the sources of energy that they can rely on, said Mnguni, the coal campaigner at the environmental justice nonprofit, groundWork.
“We know that Eskom’s electricity is not reliable, we’re going back to stage four load-shedding, which means less energy for people so people will use paraffin and coal … and now that we are approaching winter, people will be burning coal during the day and at night for both cooking and heating.”
Mnguni had moved his family several times in recent years to try to find a “less polluted” part of Middelberg for them to live in. His son had developed asthma and had to stop taking part in the 800m at his school’s athletics.
“He can only do short distances like 400m maximum. My daughter was doing 800m and 1 500m but she was taken out of both races and the school made a very specific recommendation that we had to take her to the doctor to check if she has asthma.”
Load-shedding an ‘air quality disaster’
In an editorial in the latest edition of the Clean Air Journal, a team of air quality experts from the universities of Johannesburg and Pretoria and the South African Earth Observation Network say that “South Africa’s electricity disaster is an air quality disaster, too”.
In it, they noted how the country’s electricity supply constraints were declared a State of Disaster on 9 February, coinciding with the 102nd consecutive day of power cuts. They wrote how load-shedding dates back to late 2007, but “increased more than fourfold in 2022 relative to 2021, occurring on 43% of hours in the year”.
Eskom, the national electricity utility, is the highest profile emitter of air pollution in South Africa but other sources of air pollution increase when coal-fired power stations are down. These include sources like coal and paraffin for example.
Dirty fuels
“Generators running on diesel or petrol are fired up by businesses and higher-income households during load-shedding. In many lower-income residential areas, load-shedding is exacerbated by the tripping of overloaded distribution networks and the slow response time of the utilities that de-prioritise restoration in municipalities with dubious payment histories.”
Many households in poorer areas already use dirty fuels, for example, wood, coal and paraffin but are now even more reliant on them. The use of these fuels “greatly contributes to poor ambient and indoor air quality”, the authors said.
According to the World Health Organisation, household air pollution exposure leads to noncommunicable diseases including stroke, ischaemic heart disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and lung cancer.
The editorial said: “These generator and residential burning emissions are of course released in very close proximity to people, have a high inhalation intake fraction and represent an increased health risk to humans and the environment. Thus, during load-shedding, the air pollution from energy generation shifts to local sources, which can lead to short-term peaks in ambient pollution.”
On Eskom’s fleet of power stations, they said the shortage and, more recently, low availability of generating capacity have long been grounds to keep coal-fired units running with emissions above the licence limits.
Since 2008, Eskom’s power stations have been applying to the licensing authorities for short-term exemptions from some emission limits to allow them to continue operating
in the event of an equipment malfunction or breakdown.
“The lack of sufficient capacity and shortage of funds integral to the electricity crisis then formed the main justification for Eskom’s applications for postponement and then the suspension of the Minimum Emission Standards.
“Now in 2023, none of Eskom’s coal-fired power stations are fully compliant with the emission limits that came into effect in 2020 and were first gazetted in 2010. Power stations are emitting SO2 [sulphur dioxide] at levels three to six times higher than the Minimum Emission Standards limit.”
State of Disaster
The declaration of the energy State of Disaster means that even the more lenient emission limits and controls that have not been waived due to exemptions and postponements “are no longer in effect”, the authors said.
The regulations published on 28 February allows the minister to exclude “repairs … and existing generation … facilities from the provisions of the National Environmental Management Act, or any specific environmental management Act … for the duration of the national state of disaster”.
According to the editorial, while the relaxing of environmental controls undoubtedly has the potential to assist with short-term improvements in plant availability and consequently electricity supply, the “neglect” permitted will probably lead to longer-term declines in the state of the plant. It can also lead to ill-health effects from pollution.
This is in direct conflict with one of the stated objectives of the State of Disaster to “protect property” and will increase air pollution in the region. “It is critical that this relaxation is only temporary.”
Kusile exemption
Last month, Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment Minister Barbara Creecy announced that the Kusile power station in Delmas, Mpumalanga, had been granted an exemption, subject to certain strict conditions, from the lengthy process required to amend its atmospheric emission licence to reduce load-shedding. This would allow Eskom to bypass sulphur dioxide pollution control at the plant.
The temporary solution proposed for Kusile envisages that Eskom will operate the temporary stacks without the use of the flue gas delsuphurisation (FDG) mechanism for 13 months, Creecy said. This is likely to result in increased SO2 emissions during this period, in excess of the current applicable limit contained in Kusile’s atmospheric emission licence, she said. Flue gas desulphurisation (FGD) is the process of removing sulphur compounds from the exhaust emissions of fossil-fuel powered stations.
The authors of the editorial said the current inoperation of units one to three at Kusile, Eskom’s newest and “cleanest” coal-fired station, illustrates how “running a unit too hard can contribute to a plant failure” that can result in a much longer outage time and much greater cost of repairs than would have been the case had the unit been taken down when problems were first detected.
The Life After Coal campaign said last month that the proposed bypass of Kusile’s fluegas desulphurisation pollution control would have major health impacts for the people living in the airshed of the power station. SO2 is a priority pollutant under the Air Quality Act.
Last month, Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment Minister Barbara Creecy announced that the Kusile power station in Delmas, Mpumalanga, had been granted an exemption, subject to certain strict conditions, from the lengthy process required to amend its atmospheric emission licence to reduce load-shedding. (Wikus De Wet/AFP)
Out of commission
The three units at Kusile have been out of commission since 23 October last year, when the flue duct exiting unit one’s FGD plant to the stack failed, and at the same time compromised the flue ducts for units two and three. Eskom intends to build temporary stacks that will bypass the FGD and operate the three units using these flues for a year or so while the permanent flues and chimney are repaired. These stacks are likely to be considerably shorter than the existing 220m stacks at Kusile.
“The combination of the SO2 emissions that are an order of magnitude higher without the FGD and the shorter stacks resulting in poorer dispersion will greatly increase ambient SO2 concentrations in the vicinity of the power station. This is an area with already unacceptably high SO2 concentrations, as was pointed out in the air quality impact assessment conducted prior to the construction of Kusile.”
Thousands of premature deaths
The availability of Eskom’s fleet has declined from about 85% in 2008 to 58% in 2022 because 30% of the fleet was on unplanned outages during the last year. Relative particulate (ash) emissions, which are a good indication of the performance of the abatement technology, more than doubled between 2008 (0.21kg a megawatt hour sent out) and 2020 (0.47kg/MWh sent out), although they declined again by 2022 to 0.34kg/MWhSO2, the editorial said.
“Prioritising production over the integrity of the plant for the last 15 years is one of the reasons that the coal-fired fleet is so unreliable today, and the State of Disaster will only exacerbate this practice. It is very well established that air pollution leads to thousands of premature deaths in South Africa a year.”
The cost of the emissions from both residential energy use and Eskom’s power stations cannot be ignored. “While South Africa still depends on a fleet of coal-fired power stations, it is crucial it be properly maintained and responsibly operated to avoid exacerbating the already poor air quality in the Highveld.”