EDITORIAL | The state of Eskom is a national emergency. It must be fixed

Hours a day of darkness at noon thanks to Eskom may have helped obscure the fact that our economy registered a miserly 1.2% growth rate in the fourth quarter of last year, which means the economy as measured by gross domestic product is still smaller than it was before the onset of Covid-19 two years ago. Successive finance ministers have warned us that without growth many of the upliftment and social initiatives that are meant to be at the centre of government policy will come to naught. Someone should tell Eskom and the government that.

Worse still, if things carry on this way the entire country might be shut down, as the 9-million litres of diesel that Eskom is using each day to keep the lights on become too expensive and hard to buy on a rattled global oil market. Simply put, we are in crisis.

But you wouldn’t think so judging from our handling of it. At the heart of this entirely self-inflicted crisis lies the legislated monopoly that Eskom has enjoyed historically as the producer and distributor of our electricity, mainly through coal-fired power stations situated among the coalfields of Mpumalanga. Despite enjoying a monopoly Eskom finds itself a shell of what it once was. Ruinous deployment of cadres to hold important and well-paid positions and an undeclared war of attrition on old expertise has seen the utility denuded of skills and responsible leadership.

Today, Eskom has a debt of about R400bn, which the government has to service, and the much-vaunted unbundling of the behemoth into three business units appears to be a slow and arduous process.

Only ideology, serving as a camouflage for vested interests, stands between SA and a reliable energy supply. Of course, the private sector should have been brought in a long time ago, bringing in capital and expertise and positioning itself to cater to rising electricity supply. But instead of following that route, which was abandoned during the time of former president Thabo Mbeki, Eskom went in an entirely different direction.

So private interests were allowed, but only if they were the Gupta family and its assorted local stooges who bled the last vitality out of the organisation. State capture ran rampant.

And it is ideology, parading as a local aversion to following trends in the developed world and a sentimental embrace of the coal sector, that has kept SA from developing the clean energy resources our economy and country will need in the future. To this end, mineral resources and energy minister Gwede Mantashe has proved himself an obstacle to change rather than the visionary one might have hoped for in this position.

Instead of harnessing the wind, sun and water to produce energy, Mantashe props up the coal sector and would have us put our trust in the Turkish Karpowership deal, in terms of which expensive power ships will be docked in our ports and feeding electricity from turbines. It’s expensive, dirty and few would argue that the deal is entirely in the national interest.

Mantashe, in addition to coal, is punting the gas industry, and has encouraged the idea of gas being supplied from West Coast gas fields, and beyond in Africa. Critics say this only serves to delay the transition to abundant clean energy, and favours an industry that will, like coal, be “left behind”.

For now, though, gas seems a good option for Eskom. It has long had plans to convert its open cycle gas turbines, the cost of which has risen by 40% to R700,000 per hour each with 20 of them running. It’s an astronomical expense, and global energy uncertainty can only add to the burden. According to Eskom COO Jan Oberholzer the utility is now asking the market for proposals for gas supply to two Western Cape plants and one in Mpumalanga. That’s long overdue.

The public has shown De Ruyter a generous degree of understanding, and there has been a sense that changing CEOs now would hardly help. But the buck has to stop somewhere.

And what, one might legitimately ask, has become of Eskom’s much publicised maintenance programme, which CEO Andre de Ruyter assured or warned us earlier this year would continue, and that loadshedding might be necessary? He wasn’t wrong on that one, and to make matters worse Eskom’s Medupi plant lost 720MW from its unit four after a hydrogen explosion. It will take two years to fix at a price of R2.2bn.

Eskom head of generation Phillip Dukashe told an emergency press conference this week that the coal-fired fleet was running at less than 60% capacity, with 20,000MW out of service, from a total generation capacity of about 45,000MW. Of that amount out of service, about 5,000MW could be attributed to planned maintenance, but more than three times that amount, 15,000MW, was due to unplanned breakdowns.

Late last year De Ruyter complained that maintenance was being hampered by cashflow problems and logistics and procurement challenges. The public has shown De Ruyter a generous degree of understanding, and there has been a sense that changing CEOs now would hardly help. But the buck has to stop somewhere. Are we really doing the right thing taking power stations out of service for maintenance, and adding to the electricity shortage, when many of these plants are old and run into the ground? Why not work on them when you have to, as Eskom is routinely doing anyway as a matter of policy, and fix them only when they break down, as they seem most likely to?

What we’re experiencing now is nothing short of a national emergency, and we dare not allow ourselves to be lulled into a sense of resignation about things over which we exercise no control. At times it seems pointless trying to impress on President Cyril Ramaphosa the urgency of the challenge, and the need for the government to bring in all available expertise and ideas to ensure we do not perish on this mountain.

And obviously it should be a case of full speed ahead to a future of renewable energy. Instead of dragging our heels and having to be coerced into renewables, SA should be a world leader, as indeed we were a few years ago. Either that or we can abandon all hope of the growth rates that are necessary to fulfil the promise made to the people of SA in 1994.