The cost to the country’s economy due to power outages is significant and will make potential investors uneasy but he has a plan, President Cyril Ramaphosa said on Monday.
In his weekly column, Ramaphosa said last week’s unexpected load shedding by Eskom – blamed on the failure of some of its generating units – disrupted the lives of millions of people.
He says: “The cost to our economy of power outages is significant. It contributes to investor unease at a time when we are trying to attract more domestic and foreign capital to South Africa and to improve our global rankings on ease of doing business.
“It is also understandable that South Africans became frustrated and angry. This latest round of load shedding makes even clearer the urgency with which we must act to protect our energy supply.”
He said the Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) released last week – South Africa’s policy blueprint for its industrial, commercial and household energy needs until 2030 – would support a diversified energy mix including coal, natural gas, renewable energy, battery storage and nuclear power.
The country currently relies on Eskom for about 95% of its krag, most of it coal-fired.
The restructuring of Eskom into three entities – generation, transmission and distribution – was critical to responding effectively to the evolving technologies and developments in the global energy industry.
He said Eskom needed to improve its credit rating to attract investors.
“The sheer scale of Eskom’s debt is daunting,” he says.
He said municipalities owed Eskom over R23.5 billion.