African National Congress (ANC) president Cyril Ramaphosa, has emphasised the importance of the country investing in renewable energy as Eskom implements Stage 3 and 4 of rolling blackouts.
Ramaphosa was speaking at the ANC KwaZulu-Natal Provincial Executive Committee (PEC) meeting in Pietermaritzburg. He reiterated the country’s future energy plan, saying experts are working on a hybrid energy generation system including gas, coal, nuclear and wind.
”Because we are committed to a mixed energy approach, we are going to be looking and exploiting the natural endowments that our country has, which are much cheaper, the sun and wind as well. All that will come into the mix as we proceed forward. That is the way many other countries are going. We are saying we are going to look at renewables, which has a lot of great opportunity and new industries being opened.”
VIDEO | Ramaphosa addresses Eskom at KwaZulu-Natal’s ANC PEC meeting:
Meanwhile, on Sunday Eskom’s Chief Operating Officer Jan Oberholzer said that the power utility has been able to procure just over 50 million litres of diesel to run its diesel-powered emergency generation fleet.
He says this will go a long way in reducing rolling blackouts.
Eskom says numerous interventions are being explored to manage electricity demand.
Eskom media briefing on current system challenges 22 January 2023:
