South Africa's efforts to tackle its energy crisis lack urgency and coherence

Hartmut Winkler, professor of physics at the University of Johannesburg, unpacks South Africa’s current energy challenges, and provides some insights into what is needed for the way forward.

- Hartmut Winkler

South Africa’s electricity infrastructure has been degrading over the past decade, with both scheduled and unscheduled power outages on the increase. Despite slowed economic activity due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the country experienced 1 130 hours of planned power cuts in 2021, the highest ever.

This not only leads to anger and frustration among the public, but also clearly handicaps businesses and their productivity. The alleviation of the electricity crisis is therefore a critical precondition for the country’s economic recovery. This is why observers have been watching President Cyril Ramaphosa’s strategy and its implementation with much anticipation. In the 2021 State of the Nation Address (SONA), Ramaphosa listed “the rapid expansion of our energy generation capacity” as one of government’s five top priorities. This year he reiterated that these had not changed. It would clearly be a major deliverable on which his government’s success would be judged.

In his 2022 SONA, he didn’t touch on any issue that would have raised confidence that his government is making progress on energy.

He didn’t give any indications of plans to review the Integrated Resource Plan. The last Integrated Resource Plan was adopted in 2019. The plan, which guides power station development and associated timelines, should be reviewed every two years. A revised plan is needed, especially in view of the rapid developments in energy-generating technologies. The 2019 plan is effectively already obsolete, and updated projections are likely to lead to substantially changed, optimal electricity-generating scenarios.