Eskom will forever remain the major energy producer in SA, says Ramaphosa

President Cyril Ramaphosa says the private sector has an important role to play in the generation and distribution of energy in South Africa, but electric power transmission will always be owned by government.

“The restructuring process that we are going through [at Eskom] is that we can have a number of generators [of energy], but the transmission is the real backbone of our energy architecture. The transmission and distribution will always be owned by the government. That is a must,” said Ramaphosa.

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The president made the marks while responding to MPs’ questions in the National Assembly on Thursday afternoon.

Independent power producers

While admitting that Eskom’s monopoly over the country’s energy sector was risky for the economy, Ramaphosa said he believes that the struggling power utility would continue to be SA’s biggest electricity supplier, with the private sector contributing through initiatives like the renewable independent power producer programme.

“Energy is a public good and the process of restructuring Eskom is not meant to sacrifice this public good, and just give it away to private sector actors.

“We have said that the generation of energy should be done in a way where we do have a number of players. And this is part of our energy plans over time… that we should be able to have at the generation level, a number of players including local government,” he said.

Ramaphosa was responding to a question from United Democratic Movement (UDM) MP, Nqabayomzi Kwankwa, who asked him why government had not invested in renewable energy programmes instead of relying on independent power producers (IPPs) from the private sector to help tackle the country’s energy crisis.

Kwankwa’s question came amid allegations from some political parties that government is attempting to privatise Eskom or reduce its monopoly as South Africa’s main electricity producer. Government has denied these claims.

Role of municipalities

Ramaphosa said municipalities that were exploring generating their own power by reducing their reliance on Eskom were on the right path. But he said he did not believe that the state-owed power utility’s role in the energy sector would be diminished any time soon.

“Eskom will forever in my book remain the major energy producer in our country. Eskom should produce about 45 000MW and that is a mega entity.

“And I don’t see even a local government like Cape Town or Johannesburg being able to overtake Eskom in generating energy, that is something that will not happen.”

Ramaphosa added that Eskom was not investing in its own renewable energy programmes due to the billions of debt it’s owing to its lenders, and therefore, it required the private sector to help it.

“We’ve said Eskom must also be a player in the renewable energy sector and that’s precisely what Eskom is working on. But in order for Eskom to do that, it needs the financial resources and right now the financial resources are with the private sector,” he said.

The president also said the availability and reliability of the commissioned units at the newly built Medupi and Kusile power stations was improving.

He further said the effective correction of the major plant defects at Medupi and Kusile would ensure that the plants achieved their contractual performance, with improved reliability of energy distribution from Eskom.

Meanwhile, Eskom announced, on Thursday, that load shedding would continue at stage 4 until Saturday morning.

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