Earlier this week I caught myself pondering a scenario that instantly filled me with horror.
As I stared at my load-shedding schedule for the day ahead on the Eskom se Push app — 11½ hours courtesy of a pimped-up stage 6 — I wondered if the Karpowership deal might not be worth considering after all.
The angel on my right shoulder was appalled. But the devil on my left argued that desperate times call for desperate measures.
Nothing comes free. It just boils down to how much we are willing to pay. How desperate are we to keep the lights on? Given the environmental concerns surrounding the project, do we continue to cling to our integrity while the country goes down in flames? At what point do we lower our sacrifice threshold?
It was a brief moment of insanity. I was consumed with guilt.
But our economy is in the toilet. Jobs are being decimated; investment has dried up. Food inflation is more than 14% and load-shedding is largely to blame. Traffic intersections are a deadly free for all, candles and braai nights are the norm rather than the exception, substations are blowing up, reservoirs are drying up and businesses are giving up.
The head of Anglo-American says we’re on the abyss. That’s a bad place to be in a country dismal at stepping up.
Perish the thought, but has the Karpowership deal become a viable option, given South Africa is on the verge of collapse?
Opponents of the proposed “quick fix” have described it as a “complete sh*t show”, an “irrational decision” and, potentially, “national suicide”. Ouch. But interestingly, all these phrases could apply to our economy.
So what positive spin-offs would the Karpowership deal bring us? Just one really, but it’s a biggie: 1,220MW of electricity into the grid, coming from ships — essentially floating power plants — docked off Richards Bay, Coega and Saldanha Bay. They use gas as fuel to generate electricity, which is then fed into the grid.
Minerals and energy minister Gwede Mantashe is a fan. He believes it’s a luxury for South Africa to say we don’t want Karpowerships when they are “working well” in Ivory Coast, Ghana, Gabon and Brazil. He says South Africa can't be an “island of angels” while we slip deeper into poverty. As a trade-off, he has suggested possibly cutting the proposed 20-year contract to 10 years.
On the flip side, the list of cons that come with the deal is substantial. Environmentalists have warned the project would emit an “irreversible amount of potent methane greenhouse gas”.
At least one energy expert has predicted we’ll be at stage 10 within three months, and given our situation, this doesn’t seem wildly off track
Then we have claims of tender rigging within the department, the huge cost of the plan (estimated to be as much as R220bn over 20 years), the Turkish company’s clear allergy to transparency, pending legal challenges and claims of manipulated EIAs. There are also fears the cost will be passed on to consumers.
Adding to the mix is that all three proposals are in a state of flux. Saldanha Bay is on hold after claims the views of small-scale fisheries were misrepresented, the Coega application was rejected and Karpowership temporarily withdrew its Richards Bay application. The company says it will seek a solution to the Coega rejection, has responded to the Saldanha Bay allegations and will resubmit the Richards Bay application when an administrative error is rectified.
So there are hurdles, but Eskom may be working on plan B in the background.
Bloomberg reported last month that the power utility is considering buying electricity from a Karpowership plant to be located off Mozambique. That would likely bypass internal hurdles.
And then we have Russia’s Rosatom waiting in the wings with a proposal for a fleet of small, floating nuclear reactors which can each produce about 55MW. However, they take seven years to build and would also likely come up against opposition. So they seem an unlikely short-term solution.
On paper, solving our energy crisis does not appear to be rocket science: salvage renewable projects and remove stumbling blocks that prevent suppliers from delivering the same amount of power more quickly and cheaply than Karpowership.
But this has been a challenge for government, and for those who didn’t know, this week confirmed that our newly appointed electricity minister, Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, is no silver bullet.
His action plan presented to cabinet this week didn't blow anyone’s hair back. It includes the deceleration of decommissioning Eskom's ailing power plants, with Ramokgopa saying South Africa's commitments to climate change should not be at the expense of the economy. So either way, the environment loses.
The minister warned that we should prepare ourselves for a dark winter and that things will get worse before they got better. This includes stage six load-shedding that would see 16 hours in a 32-hour cycle, reservoirs that can’t be replenished and data centres being compromised.
At least one energy expert has predicted we’ll be at stage 10 within three months, and given our situation, this doesn’t seem wildly off track.
And so we swing back to the question: What price are we willing to pay? Is it worth turning a blind eye to emissions violations and the possibility of corruption if it means the lights will stay on?
Do we support what is at best a knee-jerk, temporary solution to our electricity woes?
The simple answer is no, we don’t. Decisions made on the back of desperation seldom pay off. Too many people have cut corners or looked the other way in South Africa over the years and the results were catastrophic. We cannot fall into that trap again.
Instead, we continue to raise our voices, apply monumental pressure on government to make the right decisions and demand accountability, action and initiative. It doesn’t sound like much, but there are no quick fixes to the darkness surrounding us.
Now if I could just get rid of that little devil on my shoulder.
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