Treasury/VGBE Report: Ramaphosa’s Energy Action Plan was wrong as it misdiagnosed coal power stations underperformance
3 March 2024
The National Treasury Report, prepared by Germany’s VGBE consortium on the poor performance of Eskom coal fired power stations has irrefutably confirmed that President Cyril Ramaphosa’s Energy Action Plan (EAP) completely misdiagnosed the challenges at these stations and pursued interventions that made their underperformance worse.
To regain lost ground and improve the performance of coal fired power plants in the short term, while investment in renewable energy generation is ramped up for long term energy security, the DA is calling for the immediate abandonment of Ramaphosa’s EAP and operationalization of the recommendations in the Treasury/VGBE report. Compared to Ramaphosa’s failed EAP, the Treasury/VGBE report was put together by ‘experts with decades of experience in the operation and maintenance of coal fired power plants.’
Launched in July 2022, the EAP made erroneous recommendations that failed to improve plant performance and saw the Energy Availability Factor (EAF) plummet to an all-time low. Some of the misdiagnosis included:
The misplaced belief that bringing the remaining units at Kusile and Medupi online will lessen loadshedding;