No image available
/ 15 October 2007
Finance Minister Trevor Manuel, called on last month in Parliament to explain a R1,8-billion advance this year to the Pebble Bed Modular Reactor (PBMR), reached for Aesop’s Fables to explain the situation. "Somebody has to bell the cat," he said. Some web research and input from my colleagues tells me the phrase comes from a group of mice who formed a committee to work out what to do about a marauding cat.
There’s good and bad news on the energy efficiency front. The good news is that the country now has its own private sector council dedicated to promoting sustainability in the building industry. The bad news is that government — at least as far as its critics are concerned — is apparently dragging its heels on introducing new legislation to promote energy efficiency.
No image available
/ 20 September 2007
My doorbell rang last week. They had come to collect the garbage. I trundled out one of those plastic bins with lid and wheels that are omnipresent across Johannesburg. It was full to brimming. But this was no ordinary bin. Blue with a green lid, it belongs to Resolution Recycling, which takes away your recyclables twice a month.
No image available
/ 14 September 2007
Government has gone into the carbon trading business. The state-owned Central Energy Fund has set up its own carbon trading operation. Headquartered in London, the operation is intended to ensure that South Africa maximises the benefits for the country from the rapidly growing trade in carbon credits. Carbon credit projects already in the pipeline stand to earn the country about R900-million.
No image available
/ 7 September 2007
A 12-year study by the World Bank using new technology has found that African countries flare enough gas each year — 40-billion cubic metres (BCM) — to power half the continent’s electricity needs if put to productive use. Just one country, Nigeria, flares 23 BCM annually.
No image available
/ 3 September 2007
Here’s a story where no one comes out looking good. The story is telecommunications reform in South Africa. The cast is the ruling party, the government, rapacious foreign investors, a hapless under-resourced regulator, a well-paid trade unionist as well as "comrades" who were allowed to enrich themselves in the cause of black economic empowerment (BEE).
Eskom will decide by year-end whether it will proceed with a new 100MW facility powered entirely by the sun. Concentrated solar power is a relatively new technology worldwide, but it has the backing of the World Bank because it is the only zero-greenhouse-gas-emission technology that has the potential to rival coal-fired power as a low-cost solution to the energy crisis.
As a country we do not do too well on the green front. We are generally energy inefficient and wasteful. But we can take a small measure of pride next month when the first solar panels resulting from South African taxpayer-funded research and development come out of a state-of-the-art manufacturing plant costing upwards of R500-million.
How cool would it be to own and drive a car in Johannesburg which is emission free? One of the reasons South Africa is a disproportionately large contributor on a per capita basis to the build-up of greenhouse gases is the fact that the country has an under-developed public transport system.
There was a time not too long ago when established business started deserting the CBD. In droves. Some moved to Parktown, shortly afterwards to abandon state-of-the-art buildings for the relative perceived sanctuary of Sandton. Even new office complexes in town stood unoccupied in the general frenzy to put as much distance between corporate headquarters and the CBD.
More than 10 years ago, there was a guy who fixed the motor on our front gate. He drove one of those little Suzuki vans known as a half-loaf. But this was no ordinary half-loaf. He had taken out the engine, put in an electric motor used to drive golf carts and a network of batteries, and he had his own electric car. The only reason we all didn’t drive electric cars, he suggested, was that strong vested interests kept us tied to fossil fuel-powered vehicles.
Fiat has been showing off its cool new Uno in different parts of the country. Made in Brazil, the Fiat Flex can run on both petrol and ethanol. So clever is the technology that the car has a single tank. You sommer throw either petrol or ethanol into it and the engine is smart enough to work out what it is using and adjust accordingly.
Telkom has been a curious creature in recent days. It announced it was buying a company that offers internet connectivity in eight African countries, for R140-million. Why, you have to wonder. Is this a precursor to a disinvestment? Then there was its chief executive, Papi Molotsane, lording over the Telkom ICT Journalist of the Year function, handing out gongs to the journalists who have done the best job in the past year exposing his company as a blight on the landscape
An email addressed to Al Gore appeared in my inbox. It is from a number of pro-green biofuel campaigners. Given Gore’s new status as a do-as-I-say, not-as-I-do environmentalist, you could expect that the mail was to ask him to practise what he preaches, cut back on his personal jet travel, install low-wattage lighting at home, that sort of thing.
No image available
/ 22 February 2007
At one point while delivering his 11th budget, Finance Minister Trevor Manuel stopped and asked a colleague: "Too much? Too little?" These four words could sum up this week’s watershed budget, which, for the first time in decades, showed a surplus — this despite the fact that the government plans to spend R2-trillion over the next three years.
No image available
/ 9 February 2007
If you’re been in journalism long enough, you notice trends. Once, financial writers were pretty low on the journalistic food chain. The economy usually only made it to the front page on Budget day. But for some time now, business journalism has been part of the mainstream, writes Kevin Davie.
No image available
/ 22 January 2007
There is a famous case about an elderly woman needing medical help who phoned not the ambulance service, nor the local hospital, nor her doctor. She phoned her car company, Volvo. When I have catastrophes associated with my car, I reach for my AA card. The recent downpour brought more than a deluge of water. It brought car thieves who used the cover of rain to try and steal my car, writes Kevin Davie.
No image available
/ 15 January 2007
Just less than 5% of the country’s fuel needs will be supplied by renewable biofuels by 2013 if an ambitious government draft plan is implemented. The draft biofuels industrial strategy sees the potential for a new biofuel industry to create 55Â 000 jobs, add 0,12% to GDP and save R3,7-billion annually on the balance of payments.
No image available
/ 15 January 2007
"They were doing a dry run for the 2010 World Cup at the Komatipoort border post with Mozambique a few weeks back. Well, actually, it was just a normal working day, but with the World Cup only about 900 days away, it is probably time to start thinking of every day as a dry run," writes Kevin Davie.
Johannesburg at year-end is a ghost town, its stillness inversely matched by the cacophony of blasts and bangs on New Year’s Eve. It’s the same with the stock exchange. Even before the Christmas break, when brokers and dealers had already packed for Plett, the JSE was trading at record levels.
No image available
/ 13 November 2006
The poets are unhappy. First I read that Rian Malan saw only sad decay for our future. Then André Brink was being quoted around the globe spreading similar doom and gloom. Malan worried me no end. The last I heard, he was living in Fish Hoek or thereabouts with a person called the Princess, or something like this.
No image available
/ 8 September 2006
I have found myself drowning in a crime wave. It happened suddenly, without me moving neighbourhoods, frequenting dodgy areas or buying more expensive, more desirable belongings. There is only one change in my circumstances of which I am aware. When Radio 702 moved to a stronger, FM frequency, I started listening to it, writes Kevin Davie.
A headline in one of the country’s largest newspapers a few weeks back told us that five of the members of the African National Congress’s national executive committee have amassed R1,5-billion from empowerment wheeling and dealing. The <I>Sunday Times</I> based its story on the publication of its annual Rich List, which calculates the wealth of leading South Africans based on their shareholdings in JSE-listed companies.
Think of it as the Ogies faktor. Crude oil, which had been brought at some cost from the coast to be stored as a strategic reserve in disused coal mines at Ogies, was later made available on a preferential basis to the Sasol/Total-owned Natref refinery at Vereeniging.
Motorists paying record prices for fuel — R7 a litre in the case of Gauteng — will be more than a little surprised to learn that earlier this year an inter-governmental committee, after five years of deliberation, recommended to Cabinet that the system — where synthetic-fuel manufacturers were required to pay back monies received if oil prices were above $28,70 a barrel — be reinstated.
It costs six to seven times to build a new fossil-fuel power station compared to the average cost of existing power station per megawatt of capacity, says Eskom’s annual report released last week. "Present electricity prices are un-sustainably low. Prices are based on Eskom’s low depreciated asset base, valued at historical net book values," the report says.
Ours is a coal culture. We have an abundance of the stuff, enough to make tons of electricity and supply a big chunk of our fuel needs as well. Our electricity is among the cheapest anywhere costing, say, just 20% of what they pay in Europe. So cheap that it has been used as an investment tool. Come here for cheap electricity, investors are told.
The government is developing an ambitious plan for every household in the country to use gas for its cooking and heating needs. The plan, which includes regulating the price of gas, foresees the development of special import facilities at the country’s harbours to ship in vast quantities of liquid petroleum gas from gas-rich countries such as Algeria.
The Competition Commission’s probe into bank fees is yet to be formalised, but already there are signs of major price cuts and new competitive winds beginning to blow in the sector. Nedbank, one of the Big Four, this weekend announces fee reductions averaging 13% across the board.
The genetic modification (GM) battlefield has been extended to biofuels production, with South Africa featuring among a number of countries that are being asked to allow the import of GM maize to make ethanol. The GM industry worldwide wants to use GM to boost the energy properties of crops for ethanol production, says an environmental lawyer.
Bank fees, we are told by a recent voluminous report for the Competition Commission, have little to do with costs. They also appear to have little to do with service, as you can pay a lot or almost nothing for exactly the same facility. Most consumers know that shopping around for the most competitive home loan can lead to substantial savings.
Scratch a South African industry, it seems, and expose excessive prices over and above what companies would earn in a competitive market. In fuel, cement, cars, life insurance, telecommunications (both fixed-line and mobile), steel, chemicals, sugar and now banks, this familiar story has emerged in recent months.