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Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Dept of Minerals and Energy

Considering our energy crisis presently being experienced...I just heard a news report on 702 radio informing us that Eskom states we'll have this problem FOR THE NEXT FIVE TO SEVEN YEARS...WHAT?

I've digging around DME's website searching for clues on where we're at and how the hell we got here. Here's the problem with our energy crisis in South Africa - read the DME website and you will notice that ALL the whitepapers are either published SEVEN years ago or more...here's an example of a Whitepaper on Energy Policy...this is ABSURD!!

More on the website; "The DME's Energy Policy is based on the following key objectives: Attaining universal access to energy by 2014" - there are a few others...but this is the FIRST one...I humbly request to know where we're at in attaining this FIRST objective? - especially considering that Eskom has stated that we'll only be over this load shedding hurdle by earliest 2012...probable 2015.

An interesting read is The South Africa Yearbook and especially chapter 16 (pages 10 to 20) - it references the DME Whitepaper on Renewable Energy extensively but on page 20 of the Yearbook I found my personal little gripe; "The Service Provider will own and maintain the systems, allowing longer term financing to ameliorate monthly payments. It will provide the service at a monthly fee" - WHY NOT JUST PRIVATISE THIS? Aaaagh! This whitepaper is 5 years old and NOTHING has been done since it was published!

Right now I could SCREAM!

Anyway...a sucker punch question would be...HOW THE IN GOODNESS NAME WILL WE HOST THE SOCCER WORLD CUP considering this situation? Check out this column - I'm not agreeing with the guy but it's interesting...and concerning!

Enough...this is my last energy rant for a while...and my laptop battery is a 3% with no way to charge it now ;)

4 comments:

Marc said...

It's insane that Eskom & the government haven't made plans for a B plan.

When we called Eskom's help line to find out when they next load shed would be, they couldn't help us, and referred us to the local municipality.

I agree with your post on renewable energy. We bask in the sunlight here, and yet we don't use it to our advantage. Imagine if the government & eskom built a couple of huge fields of solar panels in the Northern Cape. They could distribute energy from there to produce more electricity. It would benefit everyone, including providing jobs for the locals.

Hopefully we won't get to the "Nigeria Stage", and the problems can be sorted out faster than 5-7 years

Thanks for the great blog..enjoy reading your posts ;)

staffordmasie@gmail.com said...

Thanks for the comment(s) Marc - appreciated! There's just one minimal disagreement I have with your posting here... "government and Eskom built" - NO DUDE! Why don't they simply announce a massive tax incentive for renewable energy adoption and let the private sector do the rest? - I don't want any more government involved in any future energy provisioning! All we need them to do is provide the necessary "carbon credits" - we're smarter than government and we'll deliver a service that is reputable and world class...they should just friggin give us the platform to do it. I am disgusted that we're in the position that we're in and absolutely nobody is actually being held responsible - although the NPA today announced that they may investigate it - but truly...nothing is going to happen! Anyway...let's hope something drastic is done soon! Keep posting buddy ;)

P.S. do a refresh on the blog post - I've made some new discoveries and made updated some of the links.

Anonymous said...

for the world cup, they'll probably light up the host cities, while shutting down the rest of the country. After all, the government must keep up appearances...

staffordmasie@gmail.com said...

I am seriously concerned about the World Cup folks! How we're going to host it when the national energy utility provider is saying stay away from SA until 2013????? If nobody in the FIFA office is in a panic about this situation...I'd be surprised!