Cape Town — Minister of Electricity, Kgotsientsho Ramokgopa, has given an update on the country’s load shedding progress and defended Eskom’s decision to continue using coal plants to produce electricity.
Ramokgopa was speaking on day two of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) conference in Boksburg and he defended the decision to keep the coal plants up and running, despite the push for renewable energy due to climate concerns, EWN reported.
The current maintenance on maintaining the old coal plants is proving costly and environmental activists are worried that it will impact the country’s current climate targets, but Ramokgopa said coal would remain part of the country’s energy mix, among gas, nuclear, and renewable energy.
“But in that equation, you must remember that you need to protect the South African economy. The South African economy is on its knees because of load shedding and therefore it is in your best interest to continue exploiting these coal-fired power stations to meet your needs as you build new generation capacity of renewables so they can replace your coal generation capacity.”
Today I will be addressing the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) National Policy Conference on matters pertaining to the progress of the implementation of the Energy Action Plan (EAP) held at the Birchwood Hotel and Conference Centre in the Gauteng Province. pic.twitter.com/fOfWtNDqoO
— Dr Kgosientsho Ramokgopa (@Kgosientsho_R) June 12, 2024
Ramokgopa also addressed the plans to end load shedding as the country has now gone 77 consecutive days without any power interruptions. He said progress has been made to bring load shedding to an end, although their is planned maintenance, Eskom has kept the lights on and increasing generation remains the priority, SABC News reported.
“We are not out of the woods yet. We have not yet ended load shedding. What we have seen is a significant level of improvement. What we need is a new generation capacity one. We need to modernise and expand the transmission network so that we are able to accommodate new generation network that is in the Cape Province.” he said.
“Once we get to that stage then we can say depending on who that person is, they can say with a degree of confidence that we have eliminated load shedding,” he added.
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Compiled by Matthew Petersen
