eBusiness Weekly
Mineral Resources and Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe said South Africa should shift to an energy mix of “renewables coupled with nuclear” until wind and solar can provide affordable energy at scale.
Mantashe was speaking to delegates at the 2022 Windaba in Cape Town on Wednesday morning. The minister said the rate and price at which wind gives energy to the country was not yet ideal for the country’s needs, and referred to wind’s lack of base-load power — the ability to generate power 24 hours a day.
“(You) need to support the renewables which have their time limits and needs for support. But a combination of them and nuclear is what will make an impact,” Mantashe said.
Challenging the public perception that President Cyril Ramaphosa strong-armed Mantashe into raising the threshold for embedded power generation projects from 1MW to 100MW last year, Mantashe told the event that he was the one who convinced the president.
Mantashe said his critics should appreciate that South Africans should give renewable energy projects the time to generate energy and contribute to the grid. He reminded delegates that the conference was happening alongside ongoing load shedding.
“When people want to take a dig on me, they say, ‘ja, we are experiencing load shedding and we need more renewables’. I’m not an engineer and I don’t want to pretend to be one, but when you look for renewables, you have an agreement with them. You must give them time to build the plant to generate energy.
“So, if you give a permit for any renewable project to come onto the stream, don’t expect them to resolve load shedding this weekend. They will build it, 12 months, 18 months, and then generate that energy. That is my experience. You can correct me if I’m wrong,” he said.
Mantashe’s remarks come a week after he told Africa Oil Week delegates in Cape Town last week that South Africa should not be dictated to about the pace or details of its energy transition and that such a transition should address energy poverty, musing that “fossil fuels kill, but hunger kills faster”.
Mantashe said while the Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) seeks to move South Africa from high-carbon emissions to low-carbon emissions, the country will do so “in a manner that does not undermine our energy security, economic growth plans, and sustainability of local communities”.
“Transition is a journey, it’s not an event,”Mantashe said.
He urged proponents of renewable energy to engage with the government with constructive contributions rather than criticism.
“My mother used to tell me ‘don’t shout (at) children, don’t shout (at) children, they become dom (stupid). Now people must not shout at us, we become dom. I am saying, give us a reasonable argument, we’ll listen. That’s how it works. When you shout on the top of your voice, we become dom,” Mantashe
said.
He told delegates that there were three procurement programmes in progress and at various stages of procurement under Bid Window 5, Bid Window 6, and the battery storage procurement programme with a total capacity of 13 813MW. —News24.com
