Integrated Resource Plan must be inclusive: BUSA

Reading Time: 3 minutes

The business community is looking for a sustainable, affordable and integrated energy resource plan that will ensure economic growth and an end to load shedding. This follows the release of the long-awaited Draft Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) 2023 for public comment.

The IRP is the country’s energy policy document that anticipates electricity demand and seeks to provide possible electricity supply solutions to meet the demand.

Businesses have encouraged those in the sector, big small and medium enterprises to make contributions to the draft document, lamenting the losses they continue to incur attributed to load shedding.

The IRP is a long-term plan by the Government that sets out the country’s required energy mix to ensure future energy security.

The document that has seen several delays must serve to balance different priorities like grid stability, cost, and environmental obligations, including emission standards.

The released draft document analyses different options to close the power shortfall for the short-term and the long-term.

Horizon One is for 2023 to 2030 with the focus being on stabilising the country’s electricity supply to end load shedding.

Horizon Two covers 2031 to 2050 and aims to ensure that South Africa has enough generating capacity to meet the demand for the coming decades through, amongst others, combinations of nuclear power, renewables, clean coal and gas.

Head of the Energy Secretariat at the South African National Energy Development Institute, Sampson Mamphweli says, “If the coal fleet is fixed as per the determination of the IRP to operate at 75% energy availability factor then load shedding will be resolved immediately, that’s what I thought I should clarify. Going forward the IRP is saying let us extend the life of the coal fleet that can still give us longevity. So, we need to fix Medupi and Kusile and make sure that they operate at maximum capacity. We also need to bring in new generation capacity to take care of the decarbonisation agenda.”

Some in the business sector are not happy with the draft document.

Business Unity South Africa (BUSA) says the plan must be inclusive and place South Africa on a sustainable footing for higher levels of economic growth. BUSA’s Happy Khambule says, “The time frame up to 2030 doesn’t give us confidence because, to be frank, the National Energy Crisis Committee (NECOM) and electricity ministers say different things on when load shedding will be arrested, that it would end in 2027 we need to know the basis of that because if the assumption is that by delaying decommissioning we are going t arrest load shedding then that doesn’t make sense because we are in load shedding and the electricity crisis is because many of power planets cannot perform especially those that need to be decommissioned because those are the ones failing all the time and are not in compliance with many of the standards.”

Small businesses have encouraged those in the sector to also add their voices, they want an end to load shedding, describing the past year as difficult for the township economy.

President of Wear Your Brand, Selby Gumede says, “For us as small businesses the energy crisis has become a pandemic, the way the country was fast to address the COVID pandemic, we should have the same approach in terms of electricity because we are dying now as small business, if you look at it now, in February we will be having a township spazas indaba discussing the same things so we are dead it’s just numbers left to be winded up from the economy.”

The IRP 2023 further warns that an analysis of the period until 2030 highlights a concerning electricity supply deficit, with those in the sector and the public urged to make their inputs ahead of the deadline of 23rd February 2024.