By Steuart Pennington
May Monthly Feedback Progress Report
Are We To Have Several Nail-Biting Years Ahead?
Tim Cohen writes (10 May) “Everybody in SA is astounded at how load shedding has suddenly been suspended and the reflexive theory is that it must be because the 2024 election campaign is under way. But it’s slowly becoming clear that the real reason is because business decided to get involved. The government (in desperation) agreed, stood aside, and they got the job done. The Business for South Africa (B4SA) group gave a report-back this week and its message was frankly astounding: load shedding will be over, but for Stage 1, by the end of this year and will be a thing of the past by the end of 2025. Really? Can this be true?”
I attended the same meeting, hopefully the beginning of a series of monthly report backs that B4SA will deliver on the work that is being done in the three focus areas of:
- Transport and Logistics
- Energy
- Crime & Corruption
The feedback was quite technical and not easy to understand if you are not up to speed with jargon associated with each focus area. But nevertheless the progress is remarkable. Below are some bullet points that may be of interest:
Transport and Logistics
- 36% less waiting time to anchor vessels
- 45% fewer vessels anchored outside Durban
- R700m investment on key corridors
- R47b National Treasury guarantee for Transnet
- New Transnet CEO, CFO Appointed
- Business expertise mobilised
- Freight logistics roadmap published
- Economic Regulation of Transport Bill on track for implementation
- Secondment of Private sector resources into Transnet on track
- Turnaround Plan, Open access on all lines on track
- Transnet National Ports Authority to be established as wholly owned subsidiary
- National Logistics Crisis Committee structural Reform programme in progress
- Potential additional capacity via third party access discussed
- March 2018 Rail volumes @ 226 Mt; March 2023 Volumes @ 149 Mt , March 2024 volumes @ 152 Mt off stretch target of 170 Mt
Energy
James Mackay, CEO of the Energy Council of South Africa explained the path the National Energy Crisis Committee (Necom) has mapped out that will lead to average Stage 1 load shedding by the end of 2024. The aim is to achieve 6GW more power.
Tim Cohen comments “The critical thing to notice here is that although an improvement in the performance of Eskom has been factored into the model, the big increases are in new-generation photovoltaic power and wind power. And it is not just that they are important to the process, they are absolutely central. After the increase in Eskom power station performance in the fourth quarter this year, the model assumes Eskom will not get any better through next year, and presumably beyond.
All the improvements that will take SA over the line will be in renewables, plus a bit from the open-cycle gas turbines. Reflecting on this, Mackay said, “We saw huge growth in rooftop solar last year of some 2,600MW. It’s coming down a bit, but we expect the growth will continue for some time. What we also see now is significant growth coming through corporate utility-size projects. Our view is that we will probably exceed the numbers in this pathway by 2025. And, at this stage, there are no grid capacity constraints that will impact that.”
- Business deployed some 350 specialists to power stations who racked up about 7,000 hours of contributions
- Government is tracking 22GW of pipeline projects, which are utility-scale projects applying for grid access.
- Eskom burned R19-billion of diesel in 2022, and nearly R30-billion in 2023. Eskom has used less diesel year-to-date than in either 2023 or 2024.
- The National Transmission Company of South Africa (NTCSA) has been established with a board put in place to unbundle and separately manage Eskom’s transmission grid.
- 6 GW of new generation energy added
- 7.6 GW Requests for Proposals released to secure 5 GW of renewable energy, 2 GW of Gas-to-power, 0.6 GW of battery storage
Crime and Corruption
- 65% reduction in security incidents on coal line
- R56m forensic analysis centre set up by Business with Hawks
- 10111 pilot project agreed
- Joint Initiative to fight Crime and Corruption (JICC) in place
- National Priority Committee on Organised Crime (NPCOC) in place
- Business Against Crime, version 2 set up
- National Prosecuting Amendment Bill before President
Conclusion
Load shedding for 17 years, now it seems with business’ shoulder to the wheel it may all but cease in one year? Significant progress in Transport and Logistics and slow progress, but progress, in Crime and Corruption. All good?
350 CEO’s involved, roughly 250 in Energy, 60 in Transport and Logistics and 40 in Crime and Corruption all in a combination of 15 workstreams with the fundamental objectives of
- Growing the Economy
- Ensuring infrastructural Integrity
- Creating Jobs
Are there several nail-biting years ahead, well, in all probability, not!
