Mining Indaba: Minister Gwede’s remarks demonstrate a lack of understanding of South Africa’s energy needs
10 May 2022
Note with Editors: Please find attached soundbites in English and Afrikaans by Kevin Mileham MP
At the Mining Indaba yesterday, Minister of Mineral Resources and Energy Gwede Mantashe revealed once again how out of touch he is with South Africa’s energy crisis. Pinning his hopes on hydroelectric power from the Grand Inga project in the Democratic Republic of Congo and a new nuclear build, Mantashe is ignoring the elephant in the room: the 4000MW to 6000MW shortfall in electricity generation we face right now.
Despite being warned more than 3 years ago that the Grand Inga scheme was extremely unlikely to generate electricity in the short to medium term, Mantashe and the Department of Energy insisted on including Grand Inga and the potential for new nuclear generation in the Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) in 2019. Nuclear is problematic in that it is not a short term solution to South Africa’s electricity supply needs, with a new nuclear plant only likely to start generating in 10 to 15 years’ time.
The IRP is South Africa’s premier policy document for electricity generation, and is intended as a short- and medium-term roadmap for decisions regarding new generation capacity. As such, it is intended to be updated regularly (at the very least, every two years). When questioned on this, however, the department has indicated that it lacks the personnel resources to do this, and therefore has to rely on outdated models and assumptions that are no longer valid or justifiable.