When Blacks in power fail they Blame someone else: Mantashe blames private sector for load-shedding

[They are in power. They are in TOTAL CONTROL, yet, they Blame someone else who doesn't even have jurisdiction or the legal right to do anything. This is as lame an excuse as you can get. The Government can determine exactly what must be done and they drive the whole process and they OWN Eskom! Now they blame private business. Jan]

Energy minister Gwede Mantashe has tried to shift the blame for South Africa’s load-shedding crisis to the private sector instead of acknowledging any wrongdoing by the ruling party.

In an interview with 702, Mantashe essentially said a lack of interest from the private sector to invest in new power stations had caused South Africa’s energy crisis.

“When the Eskom Board said to the state, ‘Listen, there will be the end of the electricity surplus by 2007; please start the build programme,’ they [government] delayed it because they banked on the private sector taking an interest. No private sector took an interest,” he said.

“If the private sector has the appetite — well and good. But the state cannot wait for that appetite for a public good to be provided to society,” Mantashe added.

While the government indeed intended to open the energy sector to private companies, it flip-flopped on policy and failed to finalise any regulations on time.

Therefore, it is disingenuous to blame the private sector for not building new power stations when there was no policy certainty, no regulations, and no guarantee they would be allowed to sell the electricity they produce and see a return on their investment.

A White Paper on the Energy Policy of the Republic of South Africa, written in December 1998 by the Department of Minerals and Energy (DME) under Penuell Maduna, highlighted the forecasted energy deficiency.

“Eskom’s present generation capacity surplus will be fully utilised by about 2007,” it said.

The document warned that long capacity expansion lead times required that plans be established “in the mid-term”, despite 2007 seeming a long way off.

“Timely steps will have to be taken to ensure that demand does not exceed available supply capacity and that appropriate strategies, including those with long lead times, are implemented in time,” it said.

“The next decision on supply-side investments will probably have to be taken by the end of 1999 to ensure that the electricity needs of the next decade are met.”

However, government didn’t act with any urgency to begin building additional capacity, with the next supply-side decision only being made in 2004.

The tardy decision and further delays at Eskom meant Medupi’s construction only began just before South Africa’s power woes began in 2007.

The then-President of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki, even acknowledged that one of the causes of the delay was that government didn’t recognise the urgency of the situation.

“When Eskom said to the government, ‘We think we must invest more in terms of electricity generation’, we said, ‘no, but all you will be doing is just to build excess capacity’,” he said at the time.

“We said, ‘Not now, later’. We were wrong. Eskom was right. We were wrong.”

Another reason was that government wanted to break Eskom’s monopoly, according to the DME.

In the DME’s Energy Security Master Plan for 2007–2025, government justified its flip-flopping regarding private sector investment in the energy market.

It said several international events significantly impacted the electricity markets worldwide after Cabinet’s decision to restructure the electricity industry in April 2001. These included:
Collapse of energy markets in California in May 2001
Collapse of energy markets in Ontario in 2001
Stalled privatisation of electricity markets in Singapore in 2002
Enron bankruptcy in 2002
The economic collapse in Argentina between 1999 and 2001
The North-eastern United States and Europe power blackouts in 2004
“All these events had an impact on the ‘investor appetite’ for the energy sector and provided valuable lessons for the public sector that seeks to embark on restructuring its power markets,” the DME said.

However, economist Ioannis Kessides wrote in his Global Warming Policy Foundation report titled The Decline and Fall of Eskom, a South African Tragedy that indecision and paralysis in government policy have significantly contributed to load-shedding.

“In recent years, government policy towards the electricity sector has been marred by indecision, paralysis, and rigidities,” Kessides wrote.

He explained that the DME’s 1998 White Paper established several key priorities, including opening the sector to private investment.

“Faced with no imminent crisis, the government dragged its feet and took no significant action,” Kessides added.

“The potentially transformative policies advocated by the White Paper were never implemented.”

Source: https://mybroadband.co.za/news/energy/489365-mantashe-blames-private-sector-for-load-shedding.html