THE fate of proposed legislation to level the playing field between utility Eskom and independent power producers (IPPs) would be known before Parliament rose on March 13, Department of Energy director-general Nelisiwe Magubane said on Tuesday.
The Independent System and Market Operator (ISMO) Bill is aimed at reducing South Africa’s reliance on coal and curbing rising energy prices by removing Eskom as a system operator through the creation of an independent state-owned entity, the ISMO.
Given that this is an election year, it is unlikely that the legislation will make it into the statute books. “That bill is dead, killed, it’s gone,” Democratic Alliance (DA) energy spokesman Lance Greyling said.
National Planning Commission member Anton Eberhard told energy leaders at a roundtable discussion in Johannesburg on Tuesday he was concerned over delays of the bill. Independent energy firm Cennergi CEO Thomas Garner, said the biggest concern was “the disappearance of the ISMO Bill and the levelling of the playing field”.
Energy Minister Ben Martins said the bill had been tossed back and forth between the National Assembly and National Council of Provinces last year, and he would “consult both houses so that there is a resolution to this issue”.
Eskom spokesman Andrew Etzinger said the utility was not opposed to the bill, as the DA had alleged, but had cautioned that South Africa’s narrow energy margins and security of supply would make a smooth handover to a new system operator difficult.
Mr Etzinger was speaking to Business Day after the roundtable discussion, hosted by the Central Energy Fund and the Department of Energy.
South Africa has been on tight energy supply before the 2008 rolling blackouts that cost the economy billions of rand.
Mr Etzinger said the proposed move to a multimarket model precipitated energy shortages as it was first mooted in the early 1990s when South Africa had excess energy and Eskom was “told not to build”.
The utility’s multibillion-rand build programme was approved only in 2004.
Mr Martins was upbeat about South Africa’s renewable energy IPP programme. It had attracted more than R150bn in foreign direct investment, and had an international reputation for fairness, transparency and process certainty that “bodes well for SA”.
South Africa has left all but a tiny slice of renewable power production to IPPs, and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development last year highlighted the country as the fastest-growing renewable energy market in the Group of 20 major economies.
Source: BDLive