South Africa
Eskom should go renewable - SACP─── 06:47 Sun, 10 Feb 2019
The South African Communist Party (SACP) says government should initiate plans to make Eskom a renewable energy producer, rather than unbundling the power utility.
In an interview with the SABC the party's Alex Mashilo said that the current model that Eskom operates on favours Independent Power Producers.
During his State of the Nation Address on Thursday, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced that the power utility would be unbundled into three entities to deal with generation, transmission and distribution under Eskom Holdings.
Currently, the power utility owes almost R420 billion and is struggling to service the debt and maintain its infrastructure.
President Ramaphosa says this will help to make Eskom sustainable.
However, Mashilo says unless the model is changed the power utility will never be debt free.
“Eskom is heavily indebted instead of modernising and building a transition to renewable energy, the private sector was advantaged through the so-called IPP’s. Eskom at least in 2016 spent something in the region of R64,4 billion. This means that the model that was chosen is a model that is self-destructive to Eskom.”
