South Africa's Pledge to Decommission Coal Plant Flounders

In 2021, Just Energy Transition in South Africa pledged to decommission 8 of its coal power plants by 2030. About $8bn of concession finance was promised by Western nations. To date, very little progress has occurred, and South Africa's coal power plants remain.

Desmond D’Sa of the Community Environment Alliance, a South African movement opposed to new oil refineries and coal plants, explains that “the politics governing South Africa is drunk on coal’s money.”

South Africa runs some of the world’s oldest coal power plants. The cluster of coal-fired power stations in eastern South Africa is the world’s dirtiest in terms of emissions, with the Kendal Power Station, the largest, emitting 10- to 30-times the permissible limit of carbon particulate matter in 2023.

Lavish promises

It was on the back of this polluting legacy that South Africa made lavish demands at the 2021 Conference of the Parties (COP) to combat climate change. The EU, Canada, Germany, the UK, and France promised to provide South Africa with $8.5bn in concessional finance. In return, South Africa pledged to shift its energy matrix toward renewable energy sources. Key to South Africa’s pledges was the decommissioning of 9 of its coal power plants by 2035. This agreement was known as the Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP).

“Lavish promises were made by South Africa’s delegates to COP21 – until reality sobered upon returning home,” says Tapuwa Nhachi, climate expert and former COP attendee.

To date, little progress has been made toward decarbonizing South Africa's coal-fired power stations. The country is at risk of losing JETP funding due to delays in closing coal-fired power plants.

‘Slow’ switch

The only visible progress began in 2022, when Eskom (the state electricity company in charge of South Africa’s power stations) signed an agreement with the Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet (a concessional financier) to retrofit Komati, once the second-largest coal power station in South Africa. Komati, (once a 1000MW coal power plant) was set to reach its end of economic life by 2022. Repowering it was seen as an ‘easy fruit to pick’, explained Bessy Nale, a senior engineering manager with the South African energy ministry.

It was hoped that 370 MW of solar and wind energy would come from Komati power plant, once emblematic of South Africa's coal usage. Additionally, 400 workers would be retrained to become solar PV employees and technicians. 

Despite billions in commitments through JET, little progress has been made in decommissioning coal plants.

Thus far, only 22 former Komati technicians have been trained as solar PV workers. The majority of workers have chosen to take severance packages rather than wait for the uncertain solar transition, explained Clive Xalolo, a whistleblower, former engineer, and climate activist who was fired from Eskom for exposing financial corruption.

“Komati is a perfect example of South Africa’s failure and refusal to honor its Just Energy Transition Plan. Komati is a textbook example of how not to transition a coal power plant to renewables,” he says.

Coal and money

At the core of inaction is the divergence of ‘politics and electricity and money’, he explains.

South Africa’s leaders are facing public uproar and violent riots amid nationwide electricity blackouts. Dumping coal for renewables is too risky.

“We won’t meet the 2030 promise to decommission coal power plants – coal is a key matrix of our power pool – it’s unfair we are pressurized to do away with coal too quickly yet European nations are reviving old coal power plants,” Gwede Mantashe, South Africa’s minerals resource minister, explained.

Mantashe even disparaged the entire JETP pact and went on to say that the Komati coal power plant should not have been decommissioned.

Irvin Jim, the secretary of South Africa’s militant National Union of Metal Workers, a 400,000-member-strong pro-coal union, is likewise frank about any moves to dump coal and switch power plants.

“We won’t accept this imperialist European plan forced on us to stop mining coal and switch to renewables. This will impoverish millions of families that depend on coal,” he says.

Xalolo agrees that there are too many vested interests that profit from coal. These will fight to block rapid progress toward renewables.

“Coal mining contractors, machinery suppliers, politicians with equity in coal mines, mafias who own coal haulage fleets, state electricity managers who inflate coal purchase invoices – it’s a long supply chain that makes handsome profit from coal,” he says.

Nearly R23bn ($1.2bn) has been stolen from the coal-dependent Eskom, the South African state electricity utility (in the last ten years), by executives, contractors, coal mafias, and politicians.

Anyone inside South Africa's Eskom who proactively works to try and switch coal power plants to renewables can risk personal harm, Xalolo says. This corroborates claims by Andre De Ruyter, the pro-renewables former CEO of Eskom, who says his coffee was once laced with poison.

“The coal lobby is in charge at the highest level of the state – and any aggressive plans to shut down coal power plants will be forcefully resisted,” adds Xalolo.

‘On the way’

The South African energy ministry told The Energy Pioneer that, although progress is not swift, the country remains committed to its goal of ‘gradually’ decommissioning power plants, even if the 2030 deadline will likely be missed. Renewables now make up 8% of South Africa’s total power matrix, Jacob Mbele, the director in South Africa’s energy ministry, says. He cites the 7000 MW of renewables that Eskom has now added to the country’s power pool to date (out of the total 61,000MW total installed capacity), as ‘a firm commitment to decarbonization’.