NGOs slam government’s proposed electricty mix

The government's integrated resource plan (IRP) for this year has been heavily criticised, largely by civil society, which said it would be disastrous for the economy and the environment.

The government's integrated resource plan (IRP) for this year has been heavily criticised, largely by civil society, which said it would be disastrous for the economy and the environment.

Published Nov 29, 2010

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The government’s integrated resource plan (IRP) for this year has been heavily criticised, largely by civil society, which said it would be disastrous for the economy and the environment.

Speaking at the Department of Energy’s public hearings in Durban on Friday, a number of NGOs and community groups called on the state to scrap the plan and to start the process again. The IRP 2010 is a 20-year electricity plan.

The plan is currently out for public comment and will be presented to the cabinet next year.

Participants in the public hearings were unhappy mainly with the fact that the plan still included coal and nuclear. The majority said they would prefer the plan to rely mainly on renewable energy.

GroundWork’s Rico Euripidou lambasted the department’s talk about using clean coal, saying “everything about coal is dirty”.

Euripidou said the plan would drain the country’s economy to the benefit of energy-intensive users at the cost of the people.

“(It will) entrench inequality and poverty, sustain the bias for coal and nuclear over renewables for centralised over dispersed and locally controlled energy systems and for capital-intensive over labour-intensive options,” he said.

Euripidou said the plan would impose impossible costs from nuclear waste on future generations.

The IRP 2010 projects a scenario that would cost R860 billion, which would take the country’s energy mix in 2030 to 48 percent coal, 16 percent renewable energy, 14 percent nuclear, 9 percent peaking open cycle gas turbine, 6 percent peaking pump storage, 5 percent mid-merit gas and 2 percent imported hydroelectricity.

Alice Thomson of Earthlife Africa said the NGO rejected the plan in its entirety as there were major problems with it.

“The IRP plans to increase South Africa’s generation capacity from our existing capacity of 44 000 megawatts to 85 241MW. To see this in context, one must realise that the whole of Durban and Cape Town each consume 1 300MW. We believe that we do not need to increase generation capacity, instead we can decrease the energy intensity of our economy,” said Thomson.

“According to the IRP, the revised balanced scenario will cost R856bn, excluding costs to health and environment. We believe this is a gross underestimation of the costs - 10 gigawatts of nuclear power (which is close to the 9.6GW in the IRP) would cost R1 trillion, according to the Department of Trade and Industry’s Ipap 2 (Industrial Policy Action Plan). That’s only the nuclear energy.”

Department of Energy acting deputy director-general for nuclear and clean energy Ompi Aphane said while the government already had a nuclear policy, no decision had been taken on how and to what extent the country would increase nuclear power capacity.

The participants also complained about the composition of the technical team that advised the government when the IRP 2010 was drafted, saying it consisted of people in the energy industry only.

They also challenged the consultation process, saying it did not cater for low-income groups because the document was electronically based and it was produced in one language - English.

Aphane said: “It is not a secret that this is very technical work but to suggest that we deliberately tried to exclude any stakeholder is not true. We believe that in terms of expertise, there could well be room to expand.”

Other organisations that opposed the plan were the SA Faith Communities Environment Institute, South Durban Community Environment Alliance, KwaZulu-Natal Subsistence Fishermen, Clairwood Ratepayers Association, Geasphere, Ecopeace and the Paper Manufacturers Association of SA.

The government received support from the SA Sugar Association (Sasa), which highlighted its power generation capacity and how it could work within the IRP. Sasa said it could start supplying power from sugar cane from 2013.

Sappi said although renewable energy was the preferred technology, coal would remain the only viable option. The paper producer also emphasised its electricity generation abilities.

Aphane said the IRP was not cast in stone as it would be revised regularly. Comments can be submitted until December 10. - Business Report

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