Thabo Sibeko, during an environmental justice march led by Earthlife Africa, hosted by the Eastern Cape Combined Environmental Forum.
23 September 2024: Speaking at the National Treasury’s first Climate Resilience Symposium recently, President Cyril Ramaphosa drew attention to the threat climate change poses to the SA economy, noting that it “has a direct and material impact on activity across the economy, increasing the cost of doing business, undermining competitiveness and dampening employment growth”.
Given the seriousness of the threats to the economy as well as to our collective welfare posed by climate change, it is heartening to note that the president recently signed the Climate Change Act into law. Among other things, the act sets out how SA will meet its greenhouse gas emissions targets in terms of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, in the context of a just transition to a low carbon and climate resilient economy and society in SA.
In late August deputy minister of electricity & energy Samantha Graham-Marê stated that a revised integrated resource plan would be completed by the end of 2024, while the integrated energy plan would be completed by mid-2025. So once again the government, in ignoring the provisions of the National Energy Act, has developed energy policies that will inevitably be — to requote Ramaphosa — “constrained by policy contradictions”.
South Africans need to ask whose interests are being served by such incoherent energy planning. It is certainly not the interests of those who seek a just transition to a low carbon, climate resilient future.
This article was first published here: https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/opinion/2024-09-23-neil-overy-and-thabo-sibeko-shambolic-energy-planning-derails-sas-path-to-a-low-carbon-future/
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