Energy Minister Dipuo Peters says her department will not review the country's 20-year electricity road map – the integrated resource plan (IRP) of 2010 – until it has finalised its overarching integrated energy plan.
This is despite research conducted on behalf of the National Planning Commission finding that many of the assumptions made and data used in the IRP are now outdated, including anticipated demand growth, data on technology and fuel availability and costs.
The position has significant implications for the state's investment plans, particularly when it comes to expanding nuclear energy.
The resource plan is the cornerstone and guideline for key decisions on new electricity capacity the government must install to meet future power demand, including the choices it must make about nuclear power. It recommends that nuclear plants generating 9 600MW of power be built. The cost has been estimated at anywhere between R400-billion and over R1-trillion.
Nuclear expansion is being fiercely debated within the government, with the planning commission calling for a review of the financial implications of the proposed nuclear programme.
Still "not out of date"
The state's intention to revise the IRP once every two years have not yet been met. But Peters is adamant that it is "not out of date".
The document was "a subset" of the overarching integrated energy plan that the government would finalise by the end of the year and would be revised once that process had been completed, she said.
She supported previous statements made by her officials indicating that the government would remain committed to its nuclear targets. "It's very clear [nuclear] is in the integrated resource plan and we are working very hard to meet our targets," Peters said.
The director-general of the department, Nelisiwe Magubane, said she firmly believed that the study done for the national planning commission was "a little bit premature" and there needed to be more engagement on the assumptions made in it to "avoid this kind of bun fight".
She pointed out that the national planning commission had set the country an aspirational growth target of 4.5%, which it could not achieved without additional electricity capacity.
Lower, more current demand assumptions did not account for the impact of strategies by Eskom to curb electricity consumption, such as its energy buy-back programmes, according to the department.
In addition the country's power plant fleet was 35 years old on average and would need to be replaced due to age and to meet air-quality standards. Even without any drastic increases in demand, significant amounts of plant would still be needed to replace power stations that would have to be retired, Magubane said.
The department recently completed an integrated nuclear infrastructure review in a bid to assess the country's readiness to embark on further nuclear expansion, which it has promised to make public. It was finalised in February and handed to the International Atomic Energy Agency for review.