Eskom, Government, See the Light!

This Urban Sprout article is an update of an earlier Urban Sprout article on the subject of SA's electricity supply situation. If our government continues to 'address' this issue with closed eyes, it will be to the serious detriment of the people of SA. We need to start agressively phasing out non-renewable sources of power in exchange for major energy efficiency overhauls in all sectors, introduction and supporting of independant renewable power producers, with Eskom becoming nothing more than one of the IPPs and with a national grid company to maintain/manage the national electricity grid. It all seems like a mammoth undoable task, but if government changes policies to allow for this to happen, it IS POSSIBLE. Just look at other examples around the world!

On the same subject, the DA has called for an investigation into how municipalities are implementing Eskom's tariff increases. It has been discovered that some municipalities are putting their tariffs up by the same percentage as Eskom (as opposed to just putting it up by the true amount). This results in the consumer paying EVEN MORE THAN Eskom's increase! For an explanation, see this Renewed Energy blog post.

One last thing, a recent Global Climate Network study titled "Low-Carbon Jobs in an
Inter-Connected World" has shown the job creation potential for a global 'green' revolution ("this paper identifies as many as 19.7 million2 energy-related job opportunities that could be created in member countries between now and 2020
as a result of policies to reduce carbon emissions.". It says about South Africa: "The South African government’s policy is guided by a range of long-term mitigation scenarios, the most stringent of which, inter alia suggests that around 50 per cent of South Africa’s energy would
have to come from renewable sources in 2050. Assuming this equates with a target of 15 per cent of electricity from renewables in 2020, 36,400 new direct jobs and 109,100 indirect jobs could be created. In addition, as many as 700,000 people could be employed in biofuels." View a summary of this paper here.