Africa-Press – South-Africa. Declare a ring-fenced state of disaster in the electricity sector, allow well-run municipalities to procure, generate and store their own electricity, and incentivise small-scale embedded electricity generators.
These are some short-term proposals DA leader John Steenhuisen made to President Cyril Ramaphosa to improve South Africa’s electricity generation capacity.
As part of a five-point plan, Steenhuisen also proposed waiving all local content requirements for electricity procurement.
Steenhuisen added:
He presented the DA’s proposals on Monday following their meeting with Ramaphosa.
“The most important piece of advice we can give the president is that he should get his government out of the way of those who want to – and who are able to – fix this mess. Many of the obstacles to increased generation are self-imposed by the government.
“Whether it’s by standing in the way of municipalities who want to procure or generate their own electricity, whether it’s through onerous regulations on small-scale generation, or any of the other counter-productive regulations around preferential procurement or local content requirement, this national government has consistently been the biggest part of the problem,” Steenhuisen said.
Soon after Steenhuisen delivered his speech, Eskom announced that load shedding could return at short notice on Monday.
This came after the power utility suspended load shedding over the weekend for the first time in five weeks.
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In the medium-term, Steenhuisen suggested the establishment of an emergency electricity commission, headed up by a power utility specialist, to deal with the crisis.
Steenhuisen also welcomed the DA-run City of Cape Town’s plan to pay cash (as opposed to credits on bills) for excess electricity generated by commercial and industrial generators “in order to incentivise them to feed as much energy as they can back to the grid”.
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