Construction World March 2019

COMMENT

Caterpillar displayed some of the innovations that will be on show at Bauma Munich 2018 at the Malaga Demonstration and Training Centre. On the left is Dr. Samantha Swanepoel, Executive Head: Marketing and Communications at Barloworld Equipment who invited myself and Munesu Shoko, editor of Capital Equipment News (published by Crown Publications) to the pre-Bauma event. Read the article on page 48

Even before Eskom’s current woes, South Africa’s government backed renewable energy to play a more significant role in the country’s future energy mix.

Electricity demand is therefore no longer captive to the national grid (Eskom and municipalities) which impacts supply and demand planning. The Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) envisions the generation of an additional 8 100 MW by 2030 from each of wind and gas, 1 000 MW from coal, 2 500 MW from hydropower and 5 670 MW from photovoltaic energy. Dimming the lights on Eskom Ronald Chauke, the Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse portfolio manager for energy said the draft suggested that the Department of Energy is slowly but surely dimming the lights of Eskom and making way for other supply sources. In what was a prophetic statement, he said that Eskom must revise its business model to diversify its portfolio and be innovative in the generation of new revenue streams for it to be resilient. However, two main barriers accompanying renewable energy in South Africa were the energy innovation system and the high cost of renewable energy technologies. The latter is decreasing which will benefit the escalation of renewable energy. South Africa first introduced the Renewable Energy Independent Power Producers Procurement Programme in 2011. The programme includes an initiative to install 17,8 GW of renewable energy before 2030. The goal of this programme is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions while

In August last year, the energy minister, Jeff Radebe announced that renewable energy will be the Department of Energy’s focus over the next decade (towards 2030) for the generation of energy. It was also envisioned that ageing Eskom plants would be decommissioned, resulting in the supply of 30% less energy by 2040 and a further 20% by 2050. So, realistically, there should be a race on to replace this lost capacity. It is far from a race though. Medupi and Kusile, which have taken years to complete and had serious escalating costs are, for me, the last significant coal fired plants built in South Africa. The downside of this for the construction industry is that Power (the others being Civils, Transport and Water) will be the biggest loser when it comes to its share of what was budgeted for infrastructure in South Africa. According to the annual budget for 2019, Power will only get 12% of the cake as it is far cheaper to build sun, wind and photovoltaic farms than an intricate coal fired power station. Of all the renewable energies in South Africa, solar power holds the most potential. Because of the country’s geographic location, it receives a large amount of radiative energy. Another useful energy in SA is wind energy. A slow-changing landscape Since 2010, the energy generation landscape had been changing rapidly, albeit that there were some serious and long delays. South Africa has commitments to climate change and has introduced renewable energy through independent power producers.

as nuclear and coal. Sadly South Africa is falling behind on renewable energy project implementation, while other nations accelerate their green energy plans. South Africa lags far behind fellow BRICS country China which has 188 000 MW of wind power capacity and 106 000 MW of solar energy capacity. In contrast, South Africa currently has just 2 094 MW of wind and 1 450 MW of solar capacity Rolling out renewable energy is subject to political interference blocking certainty, while there are inadequate renewable energy targets, the fossil fuel lobby, the lack of a plan for a just transition which has impacted trade unions and lack of an enabling and incentivising framework. Towards the end of last year, Radebe signed a R56-billion contract with 27 independent power products but the National Union of Mineworkers has threatened to end its support for the ANC over the deal – saying up to 40 000 jobs in the coal sector could be lost. This has not really been resolved. The clock is ticking. Even though there still are 11 years before 2030, various political and other processes have to be solved before renewable projects can even break ground. The positive is that the construction that is needed for the generation of renewable energy, takes a fraction of the time of a Medupi or Kusile coal fired plant.

Wilhelm du Plessis Editor

minimising the country’s reliance on non-renewable energy sources such

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CONSTRUCTION WORLD MARCH 2019