Only 28 municipalities have to date been given approval by the National Treasury to participate in the Eskom Municipal Debt Relief Support Programme, which was announced in the February Budget as part of a R254-billion debt-relief package that has been extended to the utility. The programme is designed to enable Eskom to write off municipal arrears debt, which stood at R58.5-billion at the end of March with 136 of the country’s 257 municipalities in arrears. In September, Eskom indicated that its outstanding municipal debt had increased to above R65-billion.
The chairperson of South Africa’s ailing power utility Mpho Makwana has quit and will leave Eskom Holdings at the end of the month. He will be replaced by former MTN Group executive Mteto Nyati.
Eskom has confirmed that Unit 3 at the Kusile coal-fired power station is currently providing 720 MW into the electricity grid using a temporary flue that bypasses the flue-gas desulphurisation (FGD) pollution control system. Unit 3 was restarted on September 30, just short of a year after it as well as units one and two became inoperable on October 23, 2022, after a slurry build-up in the Unit 1 flue led to its collapse, damaging the other two flues in the west chimney they share in the process.
Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa says that work is under way on the creation of an “instrument” that will allow poorer households to participate in the ongoing roll-out of rooftop solar systems – a trend currently dominated by higher-income households and companies. Speaking during his weekly briefing on the Energy Action Plan (EAP), the Minister said the current incentives available from the National Treasury, as well as the financing available from banks, presupposed that firms and households had financial resources available upfront to investment in solar generation.
Business Leadership South Africa (BLSA) CEO Busi Mavuso has voiced her concern over Ministerial meddling in State-owned enterprise (SOE) leadership decisions. “Good governance starts with a board being able to hold the executive management to account. To do that, the board needs to have appointed and have the right to dismiss the CEO.
Electricity utility Eskom expects to formally roll-out a virtual wheeling scheme, which it has been piloting with mobile telecoms group Vodacom since August, to the rest of the market before the end of 2024. The contracting platform will allow for one or more generators to transact with multiple customers that have operations distributed across the country, including those whose facilities are located in municipal distribution areas and connected to low-voltage networks.
The International Finance Corporation (IFC), part of the World Bank group, is to develop an offshore wind power road map for South Africa, IFC Principal Renewable Energy Specialist Sean Whittaker announced at the Windaba conference, at the Cape Town International Convention Centre, on late Thursday afternoon. (The IFC is the World Bank’s private sector financing institution.) “We’re very pleased to announce that we are initiating a road map for South Africa,” he said. “This work will be taking place over the next nine to 12 months.”
The energy sector requires consistent demand from a consistent flow of renewable energy projects in order to invest in local manufacturing, and not “haphazard demand that comes and goes”, says South African Renewable Energy Masterplan (Sarem) facilitator and Trade and Industrial Policy Strategies (TIPS) senior economist Gaylor Montmasson-Clair. “Anchor demand is critical. For me it is really important that we smooth out that process going forward.
With local electricity grid constraints becoming more prevalent and given the global emphasis on decarbonisation, the ongoing energy transition, as well as loadshedding, are expected to present both opportunities and risks for the South African steel industry, which is in decline. The South African Steel and Metal Fabrication Master Plan – released in 2021 – describes the local steel industry as being “largely in survival mode”, necessitating measures to increase demand for local steel and effective localisation.
The amended Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) regulations, instituted in November 2020, require product importers and manufacturers in the packaging industry to contribute towards the recycling of product packaging, which has had a significant impact on waste production, says Zero Waste Technologies operations director Hein Fourie. A contentious issue in the amended regulations for manufacturing industry, particularly those in the electronic equipment manufacturing and paper and plastic packaging industries, is the requirement to become affiliates of producer responsibility organisations (PROs) which requires the payment of daily fees, based on net cost recovery to PROs, owing to the high volumes of waste they produce.
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