‘No decisions about our energy future without transparency, says groundWork’ 28 July 2020

Decisions about South Africa’s energy future must be made in a transparent and accountable manner. This is the basis for new court proceedings launched this week by environmental justice group groundWork against the Minister of Mineral Resources and Energy Gwede Mantashe and the National Energy Regulator of South Africa (NERSA). In its court proceedings, groundWork is asking the North Gauteng High Court to order the Minister and NERSA to provide reasons for various decisions related to the Integrated Resource Plan for Electricity, 2019 (IRP). groundWork has sought written reasons for the IRP from both the Minister and NERSA – which the Minister and NERSA are legally required to provide – since November 2019. The Minister and NERSA’s failure to provide reasons has forced groundWork to institute litigation to obtain the answers.

As South Africa’s electricity plan for the next ten years, the 2019 IRP – if implemented in its current form – has far-reaching social, economic and climate impacts. “The decision to include new coal, despite this not being part of a least-cost IRP, has severely negative implications for our health and well-being, our climate, our air and water resources, and electricity prices, says groundWork’s Robby Mokgalaka. “These kinds of decisions affect everyone, and cannot be made behind closed doors, with no explanation of the rationale, justifications or assumptions relied on. There must be full transparency and accountability for all of South Africa’s electricity decision-making.”

“The make-up of South Africa’s electricity system has a material and direct impact on the Constitutional environmental rights of the people of South Africa. Both the cost of electricity and the devastating health impacts of air pollution from coal mining and power disproportionately prejudice Black women,” says Nicole Loser, attorney at the Centre for Environmental Rights. A recent report by WoMin and 350Africa.org confirms that “energy deprivation profoundly impacts African women who, by virtue of their socially-ascribed responsibilities for household care, predominantly provide for energy needs. Where energy is being generated through harmful fossil fuels…, it is peasant and working-class women and other frontline communities whose livelihoods are destroyed and their lives cut short and degraded with little or no benefit”. “Because this exercise of public power by the Minister and NERSA has far-reaching impacts for the rights of members of the public, especially women, young people and future generations, groundWork – and the public – are, at a minimum, entitled to the reasons for the decisions to promulgate the IRP in its current form”, says Loser.