South Africa has made two important decisions about our electricity supply. One was good, one bad. The good one will certainly benefit the economy and almost certainly save a lot of lives. The bad one will damage the economy and waste hundreds of billions of rand.
The news this week has been dominated by South Africa’s budget crisis and Donald President Trump’s disastrous tariffs, but other writers, including ones from the Daily Friend, have described these far better than I could have done. I have seen little comment so far on either of these electricity matters, which are very important, and so shall write about them.
On Monday, the Minister of Environment, Forestry, and Fisheries gave permission for eight giant coal stations to continue polluting the air and killing people. He made the right decision. It will probably save many lives of poor people. The minister was Dion George of the DA, who is part of GNU (which might have ended by the time this article is published on Sunday). Lethabo, Kendal, Tutuka, Majuba, Mathimba, and Medupi were granted permission to breach emission rules until 2030, Duhva and Matla until 2035. Two of these, Mathimba and Medupi, are situated in Limpopo, the other six in the densely populated area of southern Mpumalanga/Gauteng.
Coal is the dirtiest way of generating electricity, with the worst waste problem. The large amounts of CO2 emitted are not a problem at all because CO2 is a wonderful, clean, natural, life-giving gas, which has never been seen to affect the climate in the life of Earth. Other emissions are a big problem. Smoke (“particulate matter”) consists of dangerous particles, including small ones that can cause lung damage, and some heavy metals and dangerous organics; most particles can be removed from the flue gas with electrostatic precipitators or bag filters.
The two gases of primary concern are sulphur oxides (SOx), such as sulphur dioxide (SO2), produced when the sulphur in the coal is burnt in air, and nitrogen oxides (NOx), produced when anything is burnt in air at high temperatures. The sulphur dioxide can be removed from the flue gas by passing it through lime scrubbers, but this is very expensive and requires the transport of vast amounts of lime. As far as I know, only one of our coal stations, Kusile, is fitted with SO2 scrubbers, and three of these have been out of action following an accident at a stack. (Most South African coal is low in energy, high in ash, but it has the advantage of being low in sulphur, at about 1%). NOx is more difficult to remove.
Diseases
SOx and NOx can cause respiratory and cardiovascular diseases but it is difficult to quantify the death and morbidity caused by them. Other pollution, such as from motor vehicles, also causes such disease, smoking even more. However, it is safe to say that the higher the concentration of such air pollution, the more death and morbidity. Eskom estimates that pollution from its coal stations kills about 300 people a year, another study says 2,000, but it could be more or less than either.
Another complication is how you quantify “death”. The death of a sick 90-year-old does not have the same value as that of a healthy 10-year-old. A usual measure in these studies is “Years of Life Lost” (YOLLs). Using the figure of 2,000 deaths a year, you could find the proportional number of people killed by these eight big coal stations continuing to pollute. Then you could weigh that up against the number of deaths caused by not running them, which are almost certain to be far higher.
Those eight stations have a combined capacity of more than 24,000MW. If available generation was just able to supply sufficient power for the grid and you shut the eight down, that would cause Stage 24 loadshedding. The economic damage would be catastrophic. Food production would be reduced, hospitals impaired, street lights switched off, factories closed; people would lose their jobs and their livelihoods. People would lose their lives – lots of them.
In the time of Covid, it was silly to say you had to choose between lives and the economy: they are strongly linked. The dreadful lockdowns of Covid were intended to sacrifice the economy for lives. In fact they sacrificed both. The lockdowns killed an awful lot of South Africans, particularly children, who were not affected by the Covid virus at all. Shutting down these eight stations would cost lives and money. But there’s another way in which shutting down the eight stations would cause death and morbidity, against particularly among children.
Worst pollution
By far the worst air pollution in South Africa – by far – is indoor pollution caused by the burning of coal, wood, candles, and paraffin in the dwellings of the poor. Indoors, when coal and wood is burnt in dwellings, the concentrations of all the pollutants mentioned above much will be higher than outdoors from a nearby coal station. On top of that, the incomplete combustion of coal indoors, emits deadly carbon monoxide (CO), which can kill and can cause permanent brain damage in children.
On a still winter’s day, you can see an evil grey/orange smog blanketing the townships and squatter camps of South Africa. Under that smog, under roofs of wood and tin, people are suffering heart and lung diseases, and babies are having their brains permanently retarded. The harder you make it for poor people to get electricity, the more likely they are to burn coal, wood and paraffin in their dwellings. Shutting down the eight would make it much harder for them to get electricity.
Once the permission to pollute ends, what then? Would the coal stations then be required to retrofit SO2 scrubbers for the rest of their lives (not long at all) at colossal expense? This would be a terrible waste of money, which could save more lives if it were spent on health and nutrition. So far, though, Dion George has made the right decision, and I have no doubt that a minister from any other political party would have made the same.
Folly
The second policy decision shows no such wisdom. It shows insensate folly.
On Tuesday, the Electricity and Energy Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa announced an extension of the electricity transmission lines of over 1,100km, costing R440 billion, in a plan called the “Transmission Development Plan” (TDP). Transmission lines are the national, high-voltage lines that take electricity from the power stations to substations near centres of demand, where it is transformed to lower voltages and distributed to final customers, industrial, commercial, and residential. The transmission system now falls under a separate company called the National Transmission Company of South Africa. T
he new lines will be in the Northern, Western and Eastern Cape, and they are intended to bring “renewable energy”, meaning solar and wind, from solar power stations in the Northern Cape and wind turbines in the Western and Eastern Cape to centres of demand. The whole project is ruinously expensive nonsense and will benefit nobody except a small number of rich solar and wind developers.
The Northern Cape has some of the best solar resources on Earth. Not only is it in a low latitude but, being mainly desert, has very few cloudy days. If you cannot make commercial solar power for the grid here, you will not be able to make it anywhere else on Earth. And you cannot. There are two types of solar generators. Solar photovoltaic (PV) panels convert sunlight directly into electricity but they only work when the sun is shining, so they cannot provide despatchable power (power when you want it). The PV stations in the Northern Cape need storage to provide useful power, and storage is extremely expensive. Batteries are hopeless for storing grid electricity.
The other solar technology is solar thermal or concentrated solar power (CSP). The heat of the sun is used to drive a turbogenerator to make electricity. Here you can store the heat energy made during the day in tanks of molten salt and, when the sun goes down, use the stored heat to make electricity. The problem is that CSP plants are extremely expensive and can only provide despatchable electricity for short periods.
Eskom was planning to build a 100MW CSP plant near Upington in the Northern Cape, but abandoned the idea when they saw how expensive it would be. But under the wretched renewable energy program, REIPPPP, private developers knew they could receive enormous subsidies from the South African taxpayers to charge very high prices for their electricity, far higher than Eskom’s prices.
So some of them built CSPs and, sure enough, their electricity was horribly expensive. No more CSPs are being built here as far as I know. The new transmission lines from the Northern Cape to Cape Town will be very expensive. The solar PV electricity from there will be utterly useless when Cape Town needs power most, at supper time during the cold, dark, wet winter evenings.
Wind
South Africa’s wind resources are not nearly as good as her solar resources but in parts of the Western and Eastern Cape they are not bad. However, because wind is so erratic, it cannot provide despatchable electricity either. The new transmission lines to carry wind electricity will also be a complete waste of money. Explaining the R440 billion expenditure, Ramokgopa said, “It’s about ensuring that we are able to achieve energy security.” Does Ramokgopa, who seems a sensible, able man, believe this rubbish? Of course it won’t help to achieve energy security. It will make our energy much more expensive and less secure. Just look at Europe. Germany and Britain have turned heavily to wind and solar and are both seeing energy prices skyrocketing and their economies imploding as a result. There is not one example anywhere on Earth where solar and wind have made grid electricity cheaper or more secure.
Where is the R440 billion for these unwanted lines going to come from? In the old days, Eskom would have financed useful transmission lines, using cheap debt, operating the lines well, and paying off the debt quickly. It would not be possible for Eskom today, suffering under enormous debt, to finance useful transmission lines, let alone useless ones. Ramokgopa speaks of an “Independent Transmission Program” aimed at attracting private sector investment to expand the country’s electricity grid. Pardon? You are asking the private sector to invest R440 billion in unwanted transmission lines? The private sector, unlike Eskom in the state sector, will only invest if it can get a good return in less than 20 years. It seems to me impossible for it to get such a return from these lines – unless the state goes even deeper into debt to guarantee it.
The existing transmission lines in South Africa are now sufficient to carry all the electricity we need – at present.
Obviously the best generation technology for the future is nuclear, the safest and cleanest energy we know, very reliable and always economical. In operation, nuclear power emits no air pollutants at all. New nuclear stations, with conventional reactors or small modular reactors (SMRs), can be built next to the transmission lines or indeed in the sites of defunct coal stations, which are already licensed and connected to the grid. But this will take time.
We could bring in natural gas by sea to gas turbine power stations at coastal cities, and transmit the power inland on existing transmission lines. In the meantime we could use powerships. We don’t need new transmission lines, and we certainly don’t want more solar and wind for the grid. In fact we don’t want any
Electricity supply, unlike international diplomacy, is an area of life where it is possible to be strictly rational and utilitarian, and where we can easily optimise benefit and minimise cost. Despite the mad ideology of apartheid, the old South African government allowed Eskom to be just that. If only the present South African government would do the same.
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
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