Ramaphosa will ‘soon’ announce a package of additional measures to reduce severe load-shedding

President Cyril Ramaphosa told 1,600 delegates attending the final day of the ninth ANC KwaZulu-Natal elective conference that he is committed to addressing the nation soon about the Eskom crisis.

“We have been finalising and will soon announce a package of additional measures to reduce the severe load-shedding we have been experiencing, to end load-shedding in the medium term and to ensure we have energy security into the future,” he said.

“All of us are hugely unhappy with the load-shedding we have been experiencing in recent weeks, and this has demonstrated the need for the urgent reforms we need to implement.

“While we have embarked on several measures over the last four years to increase generation capacity, this is not happening fast enough.”

Ramaphosa said meetings have been held between the departments of energy, public enterprises, the police service, treasury and environment, among others.

“[We’ve been] focusing our attention on the challenges Eskom has been going through. We have been to power stations to examine the challenges our station managers are going through.

“We have also been meeting engineers and scientists to work out clear and more practical ways to resolve energy challenges and will be soon be making an announcement in this regard.

“Progress had been made in the economic reforms government had embarked on in key network industries such as electricity, telecommunications, ports, rail, water and transport,” he said.

“These reforms will make our economy more competitive and inclusive and enable faster rates of growth and job creation.”

TimesLIVE understands Ramaphosa met with the Black Business Council, labour federations and big businesses last week to discuss the energy crisis.

Ramaphosa’s plan is believed to include: 

• increasing the threshold for embedded generation from the current 100MW or scrapping it altogether;
• a temporary exemption from local content requirements for the construction of new energy projects or storage capacity;
• doing away with, or relaxing, registration processes of the National Energy Regulator of SA that are delaying new renewable energy projects;
• streamlining environmental and water approval processes for new renewable energy projects; and
• subsidising households and businesses to install roof solar panels and sell excess power to the grid.

TimesLIVE