Johannesburg - ANC NEC member and presidential hopeful Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma has criticised Western countries who are seemingly bullying South Africa into dumping coal in favour of renewable energy.
This comes after President Cyril Ramaphosa’s utterances in Egypt at the COP27 conference where the president said South Africa was planning on closing a number of ageing coal-fired power stations as part of the country’s energy transition process.
Ramaphosa had also announced that a number of European countries would be investing sizeable amounts of money in the process.
Dlamini Zuma said it was ironic how some of these Western countries were pushing for South Africa to stop the use of coal in favour of renewable energy while their economies were built on the use of coal.
“Why do we think that those trucks on the N3 and N2 are full of coal going to the port? Are those people going to eat that coal, they are going to burn it and make energy, then they say we must stop it, no,” she said
Dlamini Zuma also stressed the importance of using innovative cleaner ways of producing energy through coal.
“In Japan they have coal power stations which are very clean, so we must be doing that. We had this technology Pebble Bed Modular Reactor, we abandoned it and other countries took it.
“They are using it now to generate energy. I disagree that your grid can be solar and wind, I completely disagree. Does it make sense? It will not make sense, it doesn’t matter who is saying it,” said Dlamini Zuma.
She spoke about the need to have more nuclear power stations, especially because of the abundance in uranium the country is blessed with.
“We do have a nuclear station so we need to just add to that,” she added.
She said it was possible to have nuclear, coal and hydro which would be reliable with wind and solar energy adding support to the electricity grid.
“It can’t be the base for your grid, let’s say that we use solar, where are (we) going to store the batteries that are going to be enough for the grid.
“Then when you have to dispose of them what is the environmental issue? As we increase nuclear, maybe we can replace those coal stations, but we can’t just get rid of coal,” added Dlamini Zuma.
Yesterday in a parliamentary debate on just energy transition, Minerals and Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe said there ought to be a guaranteed base-load energy supply through a combination of gas, nuclear, coal and hydro.
“A pendulum swing from coal-powered energy generation to renewable energy does not guarantee base-load stability. It will sink the country into a base-load crisis,” he said
Mantashe said the work done by the Council for Geoscience in collaboration with the World Bank on Carbon Capture, Utilisation and Storage gave hope and belief that coal would continue to play a critical part in our Just Energy Transition.
“Therefore, any suggestion that coal has reached its sell-by date is a myth,” he added
The Star