Dogma undermines South Africa’s renewables push

As blackouts worsen, government launches flawed emergency power procurement plan and fails to liberalise sector

South Africa has committed to reducing its reliance on coal-fired power plants, but unless the government liberalises the energy sector a decisive switch to renewables seems improbable. Pretoria, in its Integrated Resource Plan 2019, set binding targets to cut installed coal capacity from 39.1GW in 2018 to 33.8GW in 2030. Over the same period, South Africa also wants to quintuple solar PV to 8GW, raise wind sixfold to 11.4GW and triple gas/diesel to 11.9GW. But overseeing this transition is state utility Eskom, which has debts of ZAR454bn ($27bn) that it cannot repay and has been mired in corruption and incompetence for decades. In short, it lacks the financial resources, knowhow and investo