storage and smart metering for wheeling. National Treasury and Eskom should be backed with experience from business on practical things like unbundling. There needs to be a radical shift in the nature of the Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) and Integrated Energy Plan (IEP) as the central vision for SA’s energy development. These must stop being static forecasting exercises and become dynamic to encourage and enable development and flexibly respond to changing technology and pricing. We must urgently implement the suggestions made in 2019 by Nedlac for a rolling two-year IRP/IEP process - getting the lowest costs within the carbon envelope should be the only driving factor, with jobs maximisation as a tie-breaker. Eskom decommissioning is an output, not an input – a plant is retired as quickly as possible as other cheaper power comes onstream, where the highest cost and reliability should be utilised to determine what is decommissioned. Technology curves (particularly storage) should be transparently laid out Nersa must provide a best in class tariff for future of
and up to date.
the electricity supplier industry, and for an unbundled Hydrogen must feature in a new IEP and the generation
Eskom - giving price transparency and clarity that
for it must feature in an IRP to ensure scalability of this
allows Eskom to recover costs but does not show bias
key export good in the future. Small modular nuclear
towards Eskom, and away from the private sector. They
should only be included if there is accurate price
also need to deal effectively in short timelines (90 days
transparency, and there is commercial demonstration of
maximum) for generation registrations and streamline
technologies. We also need to encourage localisation
the concurrence process for s34 and the IRP. We must
through a clear demand pipeline. We must combine all
transparently track a scorecard of issues around Nersa
energy issues into one argument over IRP/IEP which sees
and track its distance to success, utilising feedback from
energy as an enabler.
members to the energy subcommittee. While Nersa is an independent regulator, it is legally required to consider
Regulators in general need to be reimagined,
the interests of end-users and Busa can be a powerful
recapacitated and brought into a more responsive and
voice in representing the business energy end-user.
interactive part of the political economy where they are not islands, where things can go wrong and no one can
The single systemic risk is high youth unemployment! The
touch them. This is true obviously of so many of them,
focus should be on the review of the ‘one-size-fits-all’
but none has quite the short-term dramatic impact
nature of current regulations, costs of current legislation
as Nersa (National Energy Regulator of South Africa)
to business and how it drives inefficient outcomes. We
. An increasing focus is needed to ensure that Nersa,
need to rebalance the focus to consider the employed-
amongst others, does not delay Eskom unbundling in the
unemployed boundary as the key marginal cases that
granting and shifting of licences for the companies that
effect labour absorption and the small-big company
will ultimately be unbundled.
boundary that is crucial for firm growth.
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