A great deal of anger has recently been expressed through various sectors of our society about the exorbitant electricity price increases that NERSA has recently promulgated. While this anger is certainly justified, the one potential positive aspect of these increases is that it could lead to households and businesses implementing far greater energy efficiency measures.

Despite this specific environmental benefit though, there are other sustainability issues that need to be interrogated. Firstly, the extra income that Eskom will be raising will not be going towards instituting the massive shift towards renewable energy that we so sorely need, but will instead rather be locking us into a coal based future with the building of two new coal-fired power stations.

Secondly, there is still a huge inequality in the pricing of electricity in South Africa, with many energy intensive companies paying far less for their energy than most ordinary consumers. This is a legacy of our previous industrial policy that attracted energy intensive companies to our shores through offering them rock-bottom prices on their electricity. This legacy now needs to be addressed if we are to have any chance of putting our country on to a low carbon growth path.

Finally, it is simply immoral for the governing party to have shares in a company that will be providing the boilers for these coal-fired power stations, thereby making them billions of rands through the deal. It is for this reason that I have written to the President of the World Bank asking him to make the loan to Eskom conditional on the ANC’s divestment of these shares.

It seems a bitter irony that I have to rely on the World Bank to ensure that good governance practices are followed in South Africa. This irony is compounded by the fact that the only small investment that Eskom will be making into renewable energy is as a result of the World Bank insisting on it as part of the loan agreement. I can only hope that in the future the drive towards sustainability will be something pushed by our own government rather than prodded along by outside institutions.

email: lanceg@id.org.za