The lights are going out, literally and figuratively.
A year ago, President Cyril Ramaphosa finally put his foot down and announced a plan to vanquish loadshedding.
“We as a nation will have to grit our teeth as things get worse, while we all pull together to achieve this one unifying strategic mission,” respected energy expert and big picture thinker Professor Mark Swilling warned in an op-ed in May 2022.
One year on, Ramaphosa’s Energy Action Plan has chalked up some wins – rooftop solar, licensing, and laying the groundwork for a competitive energy market – but coal is not one of them: The performance of the coal fleet is getting worse. We’re burning diesel like there’s no tomorrow. And instead of Swilling’s “unifying strategic mission”, there is a sharpening battle over the future of coal, where the debate is increasingly unhinged from the facts.
Explore the data here or get a snapshot of where we are:
The raw data: EAF-data-as-provided-by-Eskom.xlsx
Read our original reports
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