Trade union Solidarity says it has submitted a petition to Parliament, demanding that all regulatory or legislative obstacles to unlimited private power generation be removed as a matter of urgency.
“It is obvious that Eskom does not have the capacity to supply the country’s current energy needs and it will certainly not be able to meet future energy needs. Eskom itself will decommission most of its coal fleet in the coming decades with 22 000 MW to be decommissioned by 2035.
“By 2035, South Africa will need approximately 68 000 MW of private generation just to replace this coal fleet. We therefore have to move much faster just to maintain the current level of generation. For this reason, we urgently need to facilitate and encourage private generation,” Solidarity Research Institute head Connie Mulder states.
Solidarity’s petition demands that the government urgently take the following steps:
-decentralise generation as soon as possible;
-abolish building regulations that apply to independent renewable power producers and abolish the Risk Mitigation Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme (RMIPPPP) in its entirety;
-do away with all unnecessary regulations barring investors from this market;
-increase training in renewable energy and battery storage technology; and
-implement a generous feed-in tariff scheme to address immediate supply issues.