17 January 2011 | News | Extractive industries | Climate Justice and Energy
Seriously?
Another coal plant in South Africa, More Global Warming
Download: MP3 (2.1 Mb)
The energy supply in South Africa could be at stake in two years, according to state-owned company Eskom. In response to this the company keeps planning giant coal-fired plants with enormous pollution potential. The South African government is going in the opposite direction of the most basic recommendations to tackle the climate crisis.
On January 13, environmental activists demonstrated outside the headquarters of US corporation Export-Import (Ex-Im), in Washington D.C., to prevent the corporation from funding the construction of a new Eskom coal plant.
Eskom’s chief executive, Brian Dames was cited by Reuters on January 6th saying that the country has enough capacity to generate energy, but not enough reserves”. The fact is that the state-owned energy corporation has several ongoing projects, including two coal plants that will be among the largest in the world. Both plants are already being built.
One of the projects, called Kusile, is in the municipality of Delmas, in Mpumalanga province. According to information provided by Eskom, Kusile will be a 4,800 megawatt coal plant.
Friends of the Earth US, Friends of the Earth South Africa, the Sierra Club, Jubilee USA and the Durban Center for Civil Society asked Ex-Im’s board to vote against a proposal to finance the Kusile project.
The organizations claim that the project would spew 36.8 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent into the air annually, as well as dangerous toxins and heavy metals such as arsenic and mercury.
A group of demonstrators voiced their demands outside the bank’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. “This mega- polluter would be especially harmful for South Africa’s poor, it will displace and sicken the local population, and worsen the climate crisis.” said Karen Orenstein from Friends of the Earth US.
Siziwe Khanyile, from GroundWork –Friends of the Earth South Africa explained that “The development of Kusile will affect residents, particularly the already vulnerable poor in terms of health, water and air quality. South African civil society does not support this project as the costs to the community outweigh the benefits.”
The environmental groups also said that “Most benefits will go to multinational corporations, which already pay some of the world’s lowest electricity rates due to apartheid-era special pricing deals”.
The other coal plant planned by Eskom and severely questioned by national and international environmental organizations is the Medupi plant, in Lephalale, Limpopo province. It would be a 4,788 megawatt plant. The company plans to have Medupi operating by late 2012 or early 2013, and to start the operation of Kusile a year later.
