Minister of Mineral Resources and Energy Gwede Mantashe
Mineral Resources and Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe said contrary to popular belief, his administration has launched more renewable energy projects than his predecessors.
“This term has issued more renewables than any other ministry before me. We have issued bid windows more than any other ministry. In fact we have issued more bid windows than any ministry from 2011 to 2018,” Mantashe said in an address to the Africa Energy Indaba in Cape Town on Tuesday.
As he spoke, lobby groups were protesting against Mantashe outside the venue, accusing him of being opposed to renewable energy. Environment groups and NGOs have previously criticised the minister for being a supporter of coal and fossil fuel energy technologies.
Mantashe said his department has processed requests for proposals for independent power producers (IPPs) to develop 5 000 megawatts in new generation capacity under bid window 7 of the Renewable Energy Independent Power Producers Procurement Programme, including 1 800MW of solar photovoltaic and 3 200MW of wind power. The department had also signed on 2 000MW under bid window 1 of gas-to-power and 615MW under bid window 2 of battery energy storage.
He said South Africa had introduced the IPP procurement programme in 2011 to reduce its reliance on a single or a few primary energy sources to stimulate an indigenous renewable energy industry and contribute to socio-economic development and environmentally sustainable growth.
More than 5 000MW would be open for proposals in bid window 8, the minister said.
“All those will be issued before the end of the financial year. This will add up to 7 370MW procured by the administration since the launch of the IRP [Integrated Resource Plan]. This project was launched in 2011, but we know that many people who lobby for renewables will criticise us,” he said.
Mantashe later told a media briefing that although he did not have a problem with the environmental groups demonstrating against his ideas, the continued opposition to oil and gas exploration jeopardised South Africa’s energy security.
“As an example, Shell wanted to explore gas in South Africa, the groups demonstrated, Shell left to do the same exploration in Namibia and they were part of the oil and gas discovery in Namibia, and here we have not touched anything. That is the difference of a positive view of development,” Mantashe said.
“Italian oil giant Eni was doing exploration in the coast of KZN [KwaZulu-Natal], we took them to court 47 times, they left us and went to Ivory Coast and discovered oil in huge quantities. Today we are importing part of our fuel and oil from Ivory Coast that was discovered by a company that first approached us.”
He said although it was important to transition to cleaner energy, the country and its energy experts should avoid giving into pressure to get rid of coal to comply with international commitments. “It is important to leverage the abundance of coal that can catapult development when used responsibly,” Mantashe said.
The energy minister said coal was still important as many countries continued to rely on it for baseload support which is needed to improve the energy availability factor. Baseload is the minimum level of demand on an electrical supply system over a 24-hour period.
The low energy availability factor is part of the reason South Africa has suffered load-shedding. A healthy energy availability factor is 75% but Eskom has one of 51%, as of February.
Mantashe said the department was conscious of the problems hindering progress towards ensuring reliable energy supply, including limited grid capacity, the intermittent nature of renewable energy and the decline in the energy availability factor caused by ageing infrastructure.
“The South African government continues to invest efforts and resources to arrest the decline in the [energy availability factor] and resolve the grid capacity challenges. On the other hand, it continues to invest in baseload energy sources to guarantee access to affordable and reliable energy supply for the people of South Africa,” Mantashe said.