South Africa’s Deputy Minister for Electricity and Energy, Samantha Graham-Maré, has stated that electricity generation to deal with load shedding is the government’s priority.
“Our first priority in South Africa is energy security, and beyond that, we can start to have conversations, and we are quite prepared to make sure that everything we do corresponds to our commitments to climate change.”
Graham-Maré made these remarks during an interview with SABC News on the sidelines of the Africa Energy Forum in Cape Town. She emphasized the need to balance energy security with climate change commitments.
“We have seen a lot of lives lost during the flooding in the Eastern Cape. We can’t afford climate shocks as well, but we have to make sure that everything we do is done with South Africa in mind, we have to make sure we take our people along with us.”
The Deputy Minister added that any move towards decarbonization should not result in job losses but rather generate new jobs and uplift the people.
“We have to make sure that any move in terms of decarbonisation doesn’t result in job losses but in fact we actually generate new jobs-uplifting our people and building an economy on the back of a strong economy.”
According to Prof. Mark Swilling, Co-director of the Centre for Sustainability Transitions (CST), the development of energy transmission infrastructure in the country is expected to cost around R400 billion over the next 10 years.
“The special development plan which makes provisions for 14,400 km of new lines plus sub-stations over the next 10 years will cost about R400 billion. It’s the biggest infrastructure project since 1994.”
Swilling noted that the energy transmission projects will be public-private partnership programs and will be financed by both sectors.
“The government equity injection to Eskom has helped to do that, but the national transmission company needs to be able to borrow more, but also bring in the private sector into the component of the infrastructure built programme.”
Source: https://energynewsafrica.com
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