Africa’s most industrialized economy has faced intermittent power cuts over the past decade as its power plants age.
South Africa is crafting new legislation to speed up energy projects to add generating capacity and help end power cuts, a presentation seen by Reuters on Tuesday from the country’s energy crisis committee. This shows.
Aging coal-fired power plants, lack of investment in new capacity and delayed policies to encourage private suppliers have left South Africa facing intermittent power cuts.
However, work is underway to accelerate the procurement of additional capacity, according to a presentation from the National Energy Crisis Committee, established by President Cyril Ramaphosa.
It said the committee was working to “develop emergency legislation that could be presented to Parliament to allow energy projects to proceed more quickly and to allow for coordinated and decisive action.”
It added that a “web of bureaucracy” was making it difficult to tackle the electricity crisis and that “the current regulatory framework is not designed to address energy shortages”.
The document notes that progress has been made on the Energy Action Plan announced by Ramaphosa in July, including raising licensing requirements for private embedded power generation projects and importing electricity.
Ramaphosa will be meeting with various stakeholders this week to discuss ways to deal with the worst power cuts in the country’s history.
During a meeting with leaders of political parties, it was revealed that power shortages are likely to continue until at least 2024.
The largest opposition party, the Democratic Union, announced on Tuesday that it would go to court to stop the “unacceptable tariff hike” recently approved by the energy regulator.
The party also wants the implementation of rotating power cuts declared unconstitutional.
Leaders from smaller opposition parties and some businesses threatened legal action over the power cuts on Monday when they sent a letter of attorney to outgoing Eskom CEO Andre de Ruyter and Minister of Public Enterprise Pravin Gordhan.
