Right of reply.
By Jo-Anne Smetherham and David Le Page of Fossil Free SA.
IN the November 2022 edition of Cape Business News, Nick de Blocq, CEO of fossil gas exploration company Kinetiko Energy, called renewable energy development in South Africa a “pipedream”. He made a host of assertions about the unsustainability of renewables, with no references to scientific or independent sources, and making no mention of how his industry is destabilising our global climate.
The reason Kinetiko, an Australian company, is seeking to bring its outdated technology to South Africa is probably that Australians themselves have already learned that the alternative of renewable energy plus storage is far superior to and cheaper than gas, even without regard to environmental costs (which are all too real).
The deployment of a grid-scale Tesla battery at the Hornsdale Power Reserve in South Australia in 2017 lowered prices in South Australia’s frequency and ancillary services electricity market by 90 per cent, benefits that have been passed on to consumers, while being able to far more precisely match supply to demand than can gas peakers. The Hornsdale battery saved South Australian consumers AUD 116 million ($75.78 million) in 2019 alone, and greatly reduced the scope for fossil gas plants of the kind de Blocq seeks to foist on South Africans to charge extortionate rates during times of peak demand.
In the US, similar utility scale battery storage facilities are being built at a pace that exceeds even the growth rate of the solar energy boom, with the US Energy Information Administration projecting 20.8 GW of battery storage capacity to be added from 2023 to 2025.
These developments show how renewable energy is in most instances cheaper and more practical than dirty fuel sources such as coal, oil and gas; and is the quickest way of addressing South Africa’s electricity crisis.
This view is not the wishful thinking of radical activists but the view of many independent energy analysts, who have called for the accelerated and large-scale provision of wind and photovoltaic power in South Africa.
Among these analysts is UCT researcher Hilton Trollip, who told the Mail and Guardian in July 2022 that models have proven that large-scale renewable power is the core of the solution for South Africa, and the country is “quite capable of implementing it.”
De Blocq also asserts that it would be impossible for South Africa to install the massive number of wind turbines and solar panels needed to plug our energy gap, roughly 20 GW over the next five years.
Again, real world precedents suggest he is wrong. Vietnam, a country with half South Africa’s GDP per capita, installed 9GW of solar panels in 2020 alone (SA’s entire grid is around 40GW). If our energy minister was serving the interests of all South Africans, and not just those of the coal and gas lobbies, we would have already resolved our energy crisis.
Contrary to the impression too often created by the SA media, there is in fact a substantial real expert consensus that all the world’s energy needs – electricity, transport, heating and industrial processes – can ultimately be met using renewable energy technology. The technology for large-scale storage of power generated by the wind and sun has advanced fast in recent years, and can now provide grid-scale capacity needed for renewables to replace fossil-fuels.
The South African government’s Just Transition aims to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, to a large degree through large-scale new renewable power projects, to protect livelihoods in communities that currently depend on coal.
As part of this transition, South Africa’s cabinet has approved an investment plan for an $8,5bn package to accelerate the country’s transition away from coal and towards clean energy.
How fossil gas accelerates climate change
Methane, the primary component of fossil gas, is of particular concern as a greenhouse gas because it is at least 80 times as potent a warming gas as carbon dioxide in the first 20 years after its emission.
Methane is emitted to the atmosphere during the production, processing, storage, transmission and distribution of fossil gas, and the production and processing of crude oil. It is also emitted during human activities including livestock farming, and by landfills.
A recent study found that cutting short-lived pollutants such as methane could reduce global heating by one half between 2030 and 2050. This is not the time to be pumping more of it out of the ground. Yes, fossil gas produces less carbon dioxide when burnt than does coal, a point the gas lobby loves to emphasise. They’re less quick to mention that methane leaks across the gas production and transport value chain typically more than cancel out that advantage.
United Nations Secretary General Antonio Gueterres has said in a speech to the UN General Assembly that all oil and gas exploration should be stopped to help keep global heating under 1.5C.
It is crucial to provide the climate context to discussion such as these. The Paris Agreement on Climate Change commits countries to holding global warming well below 2C, and ideally 1.5C at most, to avoid the most catastrophic effects of climate change.
This requires a 50% reduction in global carbon emissions by 2030, and the world will have to eliminate most greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 – although the latest report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says this date needs to be brought forward, as the world is heating faster than previously thought.
We risk very soon passing climate “tipping points”, after which natural processes will irreversibly accelerate the human warming influence. Far too few people are even aware of this extraordinary danger.
Nuclear energy?
De Bloq asserts that every country that can develop nuclear power, should do so. We disagree. In October last year, 26 of France’s 56 nuclear reactors were offline, struggling with maintenance problems and droughts worsened by climate change (nuclear plants need reliable water supplies for cooling). Shades of Eskom load-shedding… with brutally expensive high-level waste management legacies to boot.
Nuclear power is now far more expensive than renewables and can’t be built at the speed needed to address the climate emergency.
There may be a residual role for nuclear in some contexts (e.g., inside polar circles), but it’s not needed here. Even our coal-obsessed Department of Energy concedes SA has a solar resource that is “one of the highest in the world”. Long-term energy storage technologies are likely to be far cheaper and more robust solutions for our needs than nuclear energy.
A community-friendly alternative to gas peakers
In California, the Clean Coalition has proposed community microgrids (combining district household solar and storage) as alternatives to gas peaking plants. Their modelling shows that: “Without even accounting for operations, maintenance, and fuel — which would increase gas plant project costs dramatically — a community microgrid powered by solar+storage could replace [two planned gas peakers] for approximately $406 million.” In this instance, this solution would be 30% cheaper than a gas peaker to build, cost far less to run, and provide community and grid energy security simultaneously.
It goes without saying that in a country like South Africa, rolling out solar community micro-grids in historically disadvantaged communities while also building national grid security would be an amazing win-win scenario.
Sustainability of renewables
De Blocq also states that renewables aren’t sustainable. In some ways, he is right; no technology comes without impacts and unforeseen consequences. Currently, components of renewable power projects are often not recyclable, which does need to be considered when these projects are decommissioned.
So more attention must indeed be paid to making wind turbines and solar panels recyclable. Wind turbine manufacturer Vestas already produces 85% recyclable turbines, and aims for 100% recyclability by 2040. Multiple projects are under way to recycle even awkward components such as wind turbine blades, and responsible actors in the solar industry are looking at recyclability. But these very real current waste management problems do not outweigh the urgency of acting on climate immediately.
Conclusion
We need to act now to ensure our electricity supply and reduce carbon emissions, using the best technology at our disposal, rather than letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.
The era of basing electrical grids on massive centralised so-called baseload power is past. In modern grid management, “baseload” is now understood to be a function of how a grid functions as a whole; it has become far more expensive to rely on a few large facilities for baseload.
Over time, we will need to look at all renewables projects, along with all other sectors, from a circular economy perspective, putting plans in place for all elements when plants are decommissioned.
To the extent that it still operates, Eskom now functions in good part as a subsidy to South Africa’s coal mafia, as the horrifying attempted poisoning of outgoing CEO Andre de Ruyter clearly showed. How did De Ruyter threaten that coal mafia? He’d realised Eskom needs to go green.
The last thing battered South African consumers now need is to be further forced into subsidising outdated and expensive fossil fuel technologies, allowing a new fossil gas industry to develop and hold us hostage to ever-rising energy costs for another generation; and to an industry that is, on the whole, one of the world’s most corrupt.
It’s undoubtedly challenging moving away from fossil fuels, but it can be done, by moving to renewables along with a circular economy and a new culture of more thoughtful consumption. No other course of action makes sense. The alternatives are cheaper, more flexible, more robust and far less damaging to our global home.
– Le Page and Smetherham work for Fossil Free SA, a campaign advocating for divestment by institutions and individuals from fossil energy, to protect the human rights – and long-term savings – of current and future generations. We are currently funded by grants from European foundations and small donations from local supporters (more of which are always welcome). www.fossilfreesa.org.za.
Key references and links
World Economic Forum: ‘Renewables are the cheapest energy source’: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/07/renewables-cheapest-energy-source/
UN Environment Programme: ‘How secretive methane leaks are driving climate change’: https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/how-secretive-methane-leaks-are-driving-climate-change
The Guardian: ‘World on brink of five “disastrous” climate tipping points, study finds’: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/08/world-on-brink-five-climate-tipping-points-study-finds
Proceeding of National Academies of Science: ‘Mitigating climate disruption in time: A self-consistent approach for avoiding both near-term and long-term global warming’: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2123536119
Chemical and Engineering News: ‘Recycling renewables’: https://cen.acs.org/articles/96/i15/Recycling-renewables.html
Stockhead: ‘Here’s how new technology could remove a major road block for green steel’: https://stockhead.com.au/resources/heres-how-new-technology-could-remove-a-major-road-block-for-green-steel/
Gizmodo: ‘Could the world ever run entirely on renewable energy?’: https://gizmodo.com/could-the-world-ever-run-entirely-on-renewable-energy-1846619089
Yale Environment 360: ‘In Boost for Renewables, Grid-Scale Battery Storage Is on the Rise’: https://e360.yale.edu/features/in-boost-for-renewables-grid-scale-battery-storage-is-on-the-rise
International Energy Agency: ‘Grid-scale storage’: https://www.iea.org/reports/grid-scale-storage
Greentech Media: ‘The five most promising long-term energy storage technologies’: https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/most-promising-long-duration-storage-technologies-left-standing
