Four government departments are collaborating to produce a ”comprehensive electricity master plan” for South Africa, says the Cabinet.
Such a plan was long overdue, government communications head Themba Maseko told a media briefing at Parliament on Thursday, following the Cabinet’s fortnightly meeting the day before.
”The Cabinet decided that the ministries of minerals and energy, water affairs and forestry, public enterprises and trade and industry must collaborate to develop a comprehensive electricity master plan,” he told journalists.
The plan — set to be ready and approved ”in the new year” — was aimed at meeting the rocketing demand for energy from South Africa’s fast-growing economy.
”A lot of what’s happening in our economy was indeed planned and anticipated, but the pace of the growth has actually exceeded our capacity to meet the power and energy demands of the country.”
Responding to questions, he conceded the plan was ”long overdue”.
However, what was important was the government now knew the extent of the country’s energy requirements, and was putting a plan in place to deal with the challenges facing the economy.
”You could look at it as a negative to say it’s poor planning, but what we’re suggesting here is we’ve identified this as one of the major challenges that could constitute a major risk to economic growth, and we are putting a plan in place to deal with the challenges.”
Economic growth was placing a ”major burden” on electricity-generating capacity in South Africa.
”Major investments already in the country — the Coegas, and many other infrastructure initiatives — are already putting strain on our capacity.”
The plan was an effort to ensure that long-term demands by industry for power were met.
Asked why, given that the plan was described as comprehensive, no mention was made of climate change, he said it was focused specifically on electricity management.
Almost 90% of South Africa’s electricity is produced by coal-fired power stations. Each year these pump out millions of tons of greenhouse gases, which drive climate change.
”There has not been an extensive focus on climate change specifically with regard to this plan,” Maseko said.
State utility Eskom would continue with its strategy to increase generating capacity by refurbishing existing power plants and building new power plants, and this would form part of the plan.
On biofuels, the Cabinet had been briefed on progress towards formulating an industrial strategy to deal with this, but ”finer details” still had to be finalised.
Responding to a question on what impact the production of bio-fuels might have on food security in South Africa, Maseko said further work was needed on this matter.
On power failures affecting the 2010 Soccer World Cup, Maseko said everything would be done to ensure this did not happen.
He noted that each of the World Cup stadiums would have generators, and noted that during the last tournament in Germany these in fact had been the main source of power at each match. — Sapa