South Africa state power utility aims to shift from coal to renewables

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South Africa state power utility aims to shift from coal to renewables

JOHANNESBURG Reuters -- South African state power utility Eskom sees an opportunity to emerge from years of crisis by shifting from coal-fired power generation to natural gas and renewables, its chief executive told Reuters.

Eskom has implemented power cuts in Africa's most industrialised nation that have held back economic growth and deterred investment for more than a decade. It has over 400 billion rand of debt that it services through regular government bailouts.

In the wake of the crisis in South Africa, CEO Andre de Ruyter said that the opportunity for Eskom to act as the foundation for a new dispensation in South Africa is given by the fact that Eskom currently finds itself in very poor plant performance.

He said that he hopes that we can persuade people to set up factories here, to build components for renewable energy, that will create jobs that will create demand for electricity, which will turn this challenge that we have got at the moment from a vicious downward cycle into a virtuous upward cycle.

Eskom operates 15 coal-fired power stations that generate more than 80% of the country's electricity, but regularly break down. It also operates Africa's only nuclear power station and a handful of smaller pumped storage, hydroelectric, backup gas plants and a wind farm.

It is due to shut down about 22,000 megawatts MW of coal plants that are near the end of their life by 2035, nearly half of its 46,000 MW of nominal capacity. The plan is to replace some of it with gas and renewables and allow independent power producers to make up for the shortfall.

De Ruyter said Eskom had identified two potential gas projects -- one with a 3,000 MW capacity at Richards Bay and another 1,000 MW capacity at its retiring Komati coal plant. By 2050, Eskom hopes to achieve net zero at www.reuters. Carbon emissions through offset initiatives are among the top emitter-seeks of the com business environment.

In January 2020, De Ruyter, who took over the helm of Eskom, said Eskom hoped to get the lion's share of $8.5 billion at www.reuters. South Africa secured funding from Western countries in the deal announced at theCOP 26 climate conference in November, due to the us-eu other-will invest-speed safricas transition clean-energy biden 2021 -- 11 -- 02 of the business environment.

It will prioritize spending that money on building transmission infrastructure to connect to the best solar and wind acreage in the country, as well as strengthening the distribution grid to accommodate more private generation.

Eskom has been trying to lift the performance of its coal fleet through deep maintenance, but that hasn't yielded results. De Ruyter said it could take another three to four years to see a significant change in the energy availability factor of coal units still in operation, due to the gravity of the situation.