Cape Town - As President Cyril Ramaphosa has hinted at declaring the energy crisis a national state of disaster, experts have warned that such a move would not address the power cuts currently gripping the country.
Just Tuesday, Eskom plunged South Africans into stage 6 load shedding until this Wednesday morning. Stage 5 was implemented continuously from 5am until further notice.
As the ANC grapples with ideas on how to resolve the energy crisis, which Eskom said it would take two years to address, Ramaphosa said there was broad agreement to proceed in the direction of declaring the energy crisis a national state of disaster and the legal wheels were already in motion “to establish whether the legal requirements for the declaration of a national state of disaster are met”.
Declaring a national state of disaster under the Disaster Management Act 2002 allows the national executive to rapidly implement measures aimed at preventing or reducing the risk of disasters.
It would allow for “budgeting manoeuvring” to access billions “projected to be underspent”, the ANC said.
It is a very extensive exercise, which called for a long list of staff to come up with plans and manage the situation through the president establishing an Intergovernmental Committee on Disaster and a National Disaster Management Centre, among others.
The ANC said, in line with the presentation of Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana, its NEC lekgotla noted that such a move would require a reprioritisation of the already pressured national budget which has been impacted by global dynamics such as the performance of the Chinese and US markets as well as the conflict in Ukraine.
“Lekgotla noted that there are billions which are projected to be underspent and called for the reprioritisation of the funds to address the crisis. This can be complemented by the redesign of existing grants to optimise and aggregate infrastructure financing and capacities. Additionally, consideration should be given for the restructuring of the Eskom debt and the financing thereof,” the party said in a post-lekgotla statement.
But energy experts, activists and opposition parties alike expressed concern that a national state of disaster could only open doors for corruption amid a relaxed legislative environment.
Energy activist Peter Becker said: “This need for a state of disaster is just another excuse as the government tries to find something to blame apart from poor planning on the part of the DMRE.
“The Electricity Regulation Act is crystal clear – it was the responsibility of the Minister of the DMRE to issue section 34 determinations to initiate the building of new capacity, and this was not done despite recommendations from academics and demands from activists.
“The minister (Gwede Mantashe) has also made his belief known that renewables ‘don’t work’ and has obstructed the roll-out of renewable independent power producers.
“The ‘aspirational’ goal of a 75% Energy Availability Factor for the coal fleet is simply ridiculous. The costs of renewables are falling and new plants can be built and deliver power within six to 24 months.
“The wisdom of spending billions of rand on 40-year-old plants, whether it is coal or the ageing Koeberg nuclear plant, is questionable,” he said.
Another expert, Hilton Trollip, said that the country has an energy action plan which has five objectives set by the government that could be achieved within the existing legislation framework.
“If the government wants to declare a national state of disaster which changes the legislative environment, the government must explain which of its objectives it can’t achieve with existing legislation and why? Then how the national state of disaster would solve that legislative problem,” he said.
In a recent Eskom briefing, senior executives had said the same thing the utility had been saying for years, and ultimately “there’s no quick-fix solution” to this energy crisis, Trollip added.
“Eskom management needs to be stabilised, respected and not undermined. We have to connect substantial amounts of utility scale generation to the grid.
The cheapest and fastest is wind and solar, and it has been shown these will solve most of the supply demand gap,” he said.
Meanwhile, economist Tracey-Lee Solomon from the Bureau for Economic Research said that declaring a state of disaster “would allow the government to unlock additional funds to support the power utility”.
“In addition, assistance could be provided to businesses and households. The latter was done during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. It would enable the government to more swiftly redistribute funds among departments or take on additional debt. Although this allows the government more scope, transparency about the source of funds and their usage is important.”
The EFF rejected the idea of a national disaster, citing the Covid-19 pandemic which had no “verifiable intervention”.
The DA said talk of declaring the country’s power crisis a national state of disaster was to accede to its long-time demand to declare Eskom an ANC-made disaster zone.
“The DA re-emphasises our long-held position that any declaration of a state of disaster should be strictly ring-fenced around Eskom and the electricity sector.
“Most importantly, such a declaration must be subject to complete and transparent parliamentary oversight,” said the party’s spokesperson on mineral resources and energy, Kevin Mileham.
Cape Times