A candid André de Ruyter, Eskom Group Chief Executive, told a gathering of business leaders at the Western Cape Government’s latest edition of Cabinet Meets Business that the utility has to “retire” 22GW of power by 2035, meaning the country’s energy crisis, if left untended, is set to get far worse.

This stark message came on the back of South Africa’s worst year of rolling power cuts since the phrase “load shedding” was introduced into our national parlance over 14 years ago.

At the Cabinet Meets Business session, De Ruyter explained the predicament of the country’s ageing coal-fired power stations that have been overworked using the analogy of a car:

“Think about a rev counter on a car,” he told delegates, “Increasingly, the rev counter is in the red and you are keeping it there and if you run your rev counter into the red and you do not do maintenance, ultimately you compromise the mechanical integrity of the engine and the vehicle itself, and you start to experience breakdowns.”

The result of this in the energy space is that the country’s power plants are breaking down more frequently and their lifespan will be shorter than planned.

I appreciate that he did not try to candy-coat the reality in which the country finds itself. His honesty was discomforting at best and alarming at worst, but it is necessary to further hammer home the message, especially to the national government: South Africa has little choice but to find alternative forms of power production, beyond the country’s sole reliance on coal and Eskom’s ageing power plant fleet.

I strongly believe that now is the time for renewable energy to take its place in our country, and to be frank, I’m excited by the prospect.

If Eskom’s assessment is correct, we’ll need 50 to 60GW of renewable energy by 2030, assuming no incremental demand from economic growth. If we assume a 5% increase in demand growth, we would need approximately 120GW by 2030. 

Imagine a South Africa where, instead of pumping ash into the atmosphere, we’re setting a continental standard for going green. We know that we have some of the best wind and solar resources in the world — and not only in the more arid parts of our country — and we must all be seeking to maximise the opportunity of these resources. As De Ruyter said, “it’s time to panel beat our coal shovels into wind turbines” and I couldn’t agree more. 

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With Eskom being maxed out, the private sector will need to and is ready to step in with solutions.

As the quote goes, in every crisis, there is opportunity. There is already a raft of businesses and investors that have entered the renewable energy space, proving that it is an economically attractive sector, and I’m excited to see these numbers grow.

Through innovation and information sharing — a cornerstone of the provincial government’s culture — we must create demand for this investment to further enable it. This in turn will create jobs.

In fact, we’ve already been working on this for some time. For instance, in respect of electricity wheeling on municipal grids, which enables private-sector entities to sell power over the grid to another business or facility, we have supported seven Western Cape municipalities to develop wheeling frameworks and wheeling tariffs.

We are also working to develop standardised legal agreements required for wheeling to speed up the process elsewhere. Both the City of Cape Town and George Municipality are running wheeling pilots.

We have also focused on driving the uptake of small-scale embedded generation (i.e. rooftop solar panels) in the private sector, with 21 Western Cape municipalities able to credit businesses and households for excess electricity that is fed into the municipal grid.

To drive skills in this area, we recently helped launch a unique solar photovoltaic technician qualification pilot project. The qualification is being rolled out at several technical vocational education and training (TVET) colleges in the country, including West Coast College and False Bay College, in the Western Cape.

Our Red Tape Reduction and Green Economy Units are also there to help cut red tape for businesses and budding entrepreneurs working in the green energy sector.

Overcoming regulatory obstacles is another critical way to ameliorate the problem. De Ruyter has in the past appealed for an easing of regulatory frameworks around power procurement. This would allow for standard offers through which Eskom would be able to secure bids from private power producers to sell their surplus electricity into the grid.

This requires legislative changes and concurrence from the National Energy Regulator of South Africa (Nersa). The Western Cape government supports him in this call, urging the national government to adopt an approach that will move us toward the end of rolling blackouts.

Renewable energy is now more than ever the most effective and efficient way to deal with the energy crisis. It has become cost-competitive, will reduce the looming export impacts of carbon taxes, and opens up avenues to would-be entrepreneurs wanting to take advantage of all that this sector has to offer.

Starting now and into the future, renewable energy is the light at the end of our energy crisis tunnel. DM