Bloomberg: South Africa is ahead of its target for cutting emissions of greenhouse gases. … Regular breakdowns of the coal-fired power plants that supply more than 80% of South Africa’s electricity mean that less carbon dioxide is being pumped into the atmosphere and daily rotational cuts of more than 10 hours a day are further limiting emissions from factories.
“It’s unintentional,” Crispian Olver, the executive director of South Africa’s Presidential Climate Commission, said in an interview in Johannesburg on Monday. “We reckon we are well within the range” of meeting the 2030 target, he said. …“It’s very difficult to recommend the decommissioning of power stations in the middle of an energy crisis.”
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Swiss president warns nation to prepare for electricity shortages lasting weeks or months
By: Admin – Climate DepotMay 16, 2023 1:03 PM
South Africa Beats Climate Goal as Blackouts Slash Emissions
- South Africa emissions are falling, ahead of a 2025 target
- Power plant breakdowns are reducing industrial activity
May 15, 2023 at 10:10 AM EDT
South Africa is ahead of its target for cutting emissions of greenhouse gases.
Output of the climate-warming gases from the world’s 14th-biggest emitter is already falling even though its Nationally Determined Contribution, a target adopted by the cabinet in 2021, only forecast a decline from 2025.
Regular breakdowns of the coal-fired power plants that supply more than 80% of South Africa’s electricity mean that less carbon dioxide is being pumped into the atmosphere and daily rotational cuts of more than 10 hours a day are further limiting emissions from factories.
“It’s unintentional,” Crispian Olver, the executive director of South Africa’s Presidential Climate Commission, said in an interview in Johannesburg on Monday. “We reckon we are well within the range” of meeting the 2030 target, he said.
South Africa aims to reduce its emissions to between 350 and 420 megatons of carbon dioxide equivalent by 2030, bettering a target set in 2015 of emitting between 398 and 614 megatons by that date. The 2021 goal was key to South Africa securing pledges of $8.5 billion in climate finance from some of the world’s richest nations.
If the decommissioning dates of some coal-fired plants are pushed back it will make little difference to emissions as they produce little electricity in any event, he said.
Keeping them open for another “year or two is neither here nor there,” Olver said on an earlier webinar. “It’s very difficult to recommend the decommissioning of power stations in the middle of an energy crisis.”
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Flashback: Rutgers U. Professor: ‘To Save the Climate, Give Up the Demand for Constant Electricity’– David McDermott Hughes, Professor of Anthropology at Rutgers University and author of Energy without Conscience: “For a while, let’s eat a cold dinner here and there. Continuity costs too much. Climate change kills, and it kills vulnerable people first. Intermittency saves lives, and it saves vulnerable people first. Let the pause take its place in continuous climate activism…What applies in the pandemic also applies—and also with desperate urgency—in the climate crisis. We can live with some intermittency and rationing—at least until batteries and other forms of energy storage are up and running everywhere.”
The Daily Telegraph – March 2, 2011: ‘Era of Constant Electricity at Home is Ending, says UK power chief’
Excerpt: ‘The days of permanently available electricity may be coming to an end, the head of the power network said yesterday. Families would have to get used to only using power when it was available, rather than constantly, said Steve Holliday, chief executive of National Grid. Mr Holliday was challenged over how the country would “keep the lights on” when it relied more on wind turbines as supplies of gas dwindled. Electricity provided by wind farms will increase six-fold by 2020 but critics complain they only generate on windy days.
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“We are going to change our own behaviour and consume it when it is available and available cheaply.”
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Swiss president warns nation to prepare for electricity shortages lasting weeks or months
British publication The Times ran one of the nuttiest bits of climate change babble in a Feb. 20 story headlined: “How to fix global warming? Bring back rationing, say scientists.” The first sentence of the piece dripped with brain-melting nonsense: “Second World War-style rationing of petrol, household energy and meat could help to fight climate change, British scientists have recommended.”
The newspaper cited “researchers” – whom it does not name until the end of the article – from the University of Leeds who published climate propaganda disguised as analysis in the journal Ethics, Policy & Environment. The Times quoted the study, which also suggested giving citizens a “carbon allowance” and creating a “scarcity of fossil fuels.” …
Of course, what The Times was selling was massive government intervention. “The researchers argue that, as a first step, governments would need to regulate sectors such as the oil industry, with the importing of fossil fuels ‘banned or restricted’ in certain areas.” In effect, said The Times, “[t]his would create a scarcity of fossil fuels, with rationing then introduced to ‘manage the scarcity’, they explain.”
It is not a bug, it’s a feature!
I love the smell of intelligent commentary in the morning!
How do we know Bloomberg (and the SA spokesperson) are Bolshevik disinformation agents? “Unintentional”!
Let me rewrite that bloomberg headline:
When the Bolsheviks took control of government in the nineties, they explicitly stated:
“Eskom shall be used as a vehicle of transformation”. How will you get fifty million people on equal economic footing, other than destroying the lives of the happier half?
Thought I had yesterday: Did some mad fark go and sell all the State’s carbon credits, putting the money in its own bloody pocket, and switching off the economy?
So there is an upside to a country in the process of total economic collapse due to an energy crisis brought on by investing in unreliable wind/solar projects rather than maintenance of reliable fossil fuel plants? Congratulations South Africa for demonstrating how to rapidly reduce CO2 emissions. Tip – not a good idea to invest in a BEV if you live in SA.
Total collapse is coming for the RSA a violent nasty place will become 100 times worse Zimbabwe mark 2 is coming
Time for the world to wake up to this nasty green agenda
Then when it gets violent- the greens will blame it on climate change.
How could you afford a battery car anyway with no job to pay for it and no need to go anywhere anyway.
I’m starting to see a pattern here.
Communists take over, and everything starts falling apart.
Marxists with all the class-disordered ideologies that they entail.
And they thought the old colonialism was bad.
Ah but they can now export and sell: Virtue
Everybody wants that = they’ll be minted.
How long will the people of SA put up with this?
The people of South Africa are disenfranchised and disarmed.
The main question is, will anyone see this as the inevitable result for everyone with Netzero
No. Never underestimate Leftists’ ability to bury recognition of reality underneath dung-heaps of dogma. The collapse will be blamed on Western culture and capitalism.
Dave, that was close to perfectly correct…in any other country. In South Africa, every calamity can be dismissed merely by blaming it on Apartheid, or, as it was called at the time, apartheid, or more generally, Separate Development.
The fall of “the Apartheid Regime” was also the death knell of all indigenous cultures, of which there were at least four major separate ones. The British sold hunting licenses for the more “backward” ones… The rest are now being turned on each other.
The democratic South Africa is a Green, diverse, progressive mecca and omen of change.
LOL
/sarc 😉 😉
And here you have it, folks. This Tread’s sarcasm award winner.
Shithole is shorter.
Our former President, Barak Obama, told South Africans they should not aspire to American standard of living because that would destroy the planet. SA is simply following his advice. Africans suffering so he can continue to enjoy his ocean front mansions in Massachusetts and Hawaii is the result.
Correct, from the Scumbag in Chief
No wonder they need to sell weapons to Putin to raise cash.
Like the russians, the SA generals et al are equally corrupt. I doubt weapons from SA are serviceable .
SA used to have an advanced armaments industry.
SA used to have a functioning economy.
SA is on their way to the real net zero.
SA is becoming just another failed African state. Both SA and Rhodesia tried to make a go of democracy and capitalism on the African continent. Tribalism and Marxism got in the way.
Inflation in Zimbabwe is running at around 480%.
It is a continuing tragedy facilitated by the West
that believed their democratic model would transform the country.
Political and economic meddling in a country is a recipe for disaster.
South Africa needs to see this in the US/EU push for them to go carbon neutral.
A few years ago South Africa had energy shortages because the money designated for maintenance of its coal plants was somehow finding its way into the pockets and bank accounts of the managers in charge of operations. Chances are good that the proposals of the climate activists who are advocating clean energy funds for developing world countries to build wind and solar generating stations will meet the same fate. If they do, will the donor nations be able to get a refund?
Now they steal the copper transmission lines.
Your reporting is around twenty years late, mate!
This has been the leftards’ goal all along, collapse the existing systems and let people die en masse, to “save the planet”. They won’t die, they will live in the lap of luxury, all the electricity and gas and oil and coal they want to cook their lobster and steaks, plenty of young children to sexually abuse, plenty of slaves to do their bidding.
It seems that there is a bit of a bait and switch going on here. People were told that their power supply would transition from fossil fuels to renewables and their costs would fall. At no time were they told in the renewables PR that economic activity would decline. On the contrary, the expectation was that economic activity would increase, thanks to the availability of cheap or even free renewable energy.
Now we are told that Unintentional…power plant breakdowns are reducing industrial activity, and that this is a good thing. The media should be asking why the proponents of energy transition aren’t appalled by the devastating impact on people’s lives of these energy failures, and they should be asking why energy failures are seen as helping to meet their targets when their stated targets included plentiful low-cost renewable energy. Given the lack of sympathy for those affected, it isn’t too much of a leap to suppose that this destruction of people’s lives is actually what was intended all along.
The media should read some of the statements made by energy transition advocates like Maurice Strong, eg. “Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?”. Ironically, Maurice Strong also said “Either we reduce the world’s population voluntarily or nature will do this for us, but brutally.” but the energy transition is already showing us its own form of brutality.
10 hours per day deprived of the energy form most responsible for western civilization? most responsible for the high standard of living in Western cultures? most responsible for the largest middle class in the history of humanity? This is GOOD? If so, a deluge of flying sharks should prove equally beneficial. As a small business owner, I know the impossible situation I would experience if required to forfeit electricity for an average of 10 hours per day. And those hours would not be during the night, when demand characteristically drops. A few months of such deprivation and I would be filing for bankruptcy, along with an army of other middle-class denizens. But getting rid of us, and getting control of the remainder, is all part of this plan.
Our next election is shaping up to be a spanking for the 50-sex set with their dreams of mythic AOC-approved green homes and 15 minute cities, so everyone can bike to work while damning the snow or rain. A spanking, that is, unless the liberal urban centers once again count too many fraudulent votes.
+1 sometimes just doesn’t do justice. We need a +42 button as well, just like the Dominion one.
I use +42X42^42.
I hope that “South Africa securing pledges of $8.5 billion in climate finance” was worth it to the industries and peoples impacted. I assume, however, it mostly went to politicians and crony capitalists. South Africa is rapidly becoming just another Leftist shithole.
Collapsed power cables because of theft, corruption, crime, mismangement, sabotage, illegal connections, non-payment of electricity bills are contributing to the numerous extended power outages in South Africa. The CEO of Eskom (the South African electricity public utility), Andre de Ruyter, who recently suddenly resigned after three years has just published a book detailing some of this. Truth to Power: My Three Years Inside Eskom.
This book reveals another very important contributory factor. Andre de Ruyter is evidently an intelligent and hard working man who previously worked for over 20 years in various managerial positions for Sasol a huge petrochemical company that turns coal into liquid fuels. He seemed like a good fit. Twenty-eight candidates were headhunted but turned down the job. Why did de Ruyter take the job? Because “I saw an opportunity to do something very meaningful: to reduce Eskom and the South African economy’s dependence on coal.”
How could someone of his intellect not recognize that South Africa had a plentiful supply of cheap coal that provided it with a reliable supply of the cheapest electricity for many years? Despite not being an engineer or chemist his business insights should have guided him. He gives the answer:
“I am not a climate denialist. The notion that we can release in the space of 250 years the carbon that has been trapped in fossil fuels over millennia, without it having any impact on our environment, surely borders on stupidity. The science is incontrovertible. Climate change caused by carbon emissions is a fact.”
This man appears to have never questioned the climate alarmism narrative. Had he not noticed alarmism for whatever reason frequently turns out to be false? Did he never ask if and how such a small percentage of CO2 could have a significant impact on climate and about the complexity of climate? HJ van der Bijl, who established the Electricity Supply Commission in 1923 was a man with great insight into both physics and chemisty. I have little doubt, considering how he worked, that he would have seen right through the climate alarmist fraud.
A report today as South Africa faces a dark and cold winter:
Eskom says it anticipates a minimum of Stage 5 load shedding for most of the winter,
but trends show there is a strong possibility of Stage 8 over July and August.
Stage 8 load shedding means consumers will be without electricity for half the time –
or 16 hours in a 32-hour cycle.
I predict a real winter of discontent when this arrives in Europe later this year.
So you deplorables don’t appreciate helicopter money for Tesla subsidies and their superchargers eh? We do have other alternatives if strangling direct tailpipe emissions doesn’t float yer boat either-
Explaining Why Cars In Singapore Are So Expensive (dollarsandsense.sg)
South Africa is setting the standard for all the developed nations to follow.
They have achieved a number of firsts in demand side management that is allowing them to reduce power demand. This website advises when consumers can expect to have power available:
https://www.ourpower.co.za
I have been saying it for over a decade now -Any predominantly thermal powered grid that permitted intermittent generators to connect under completely different rules to dispatchable generation is in terminal; decline. It will be lower cost for individual consumers to make their own than rely on a third world power supply. South Africa has installed 7GW of next to useless wind and solar. They could have built a couple of decent dispatchable coal plants with the capital wasted.
So grid secession is now occurring in South Africa:
https://theconversation.com/south-africas-power-crisis-going-off-the-grid-works-for-the-wealthy-but-could-deepen-injustice-for-the-poor-200288
South Africa provides a window to the future for the western world hell bent on de-industrialising their economies in the hope that China will be willing and able to supply all their manufactured goods.
“…7 GW of next to useless wind and solar”
Completely agree with the above statement but in South Africa the naive switch to renewable energy is not the MAIN cause of the collapse of the ESKOM electrical grid. The root cause of the steady economic collapse of the country is a race based affirmative action policy known as Black Economic Empowerment (BEE ). This racist policy has undermined the economy of the entire country.
Negative effects after 30 years of BEE :
– experienced and competent power plant OPERATING staff have gradually been replaced with mostly undertrained, inexperienced personnel.
The tried and tested process of employees gradually gaining valuable experience over many decades has all but disappeared.
– experienced and competent power plant MAINTENANCE on site staff have been replaced with mostly undertrained and inexperienced technical people.
Maintenance work that is outsourced is routinely carried out by BEE companies that are not competent in the engineering fields that are supposedly their area of “speciality”. It is not uncommon for equipment to repeatedly break down after routine maintenance has been carried out.
– new power plants that have been built recently have routinely broken down soon after being commissioned. BEE building contractors and the sub-contractors that are engaged in the erection and commissioning of new plants do not usually meet the minimum competence and experience standards that are required for these contractors. The tender process is exceedingly corrupt and contracts are routinely awarded weighted according to backhands and crony gain. The technical competence of sub-contracting parties is not very high on the order of priorities during the awarding of tenders.
The solution to South Africa’s problems is probably to be found only by local municipalities building small municipal power stations. The City of Cape Town, which is at present not controlled by the ruling ANC, should perhaps revert back to municipal power stations as was the case in the past (pre 1980s). The criteria for operating, maintenance and contracting parties should be based solely on engineering competence and not race or quota based.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Economic_Empowerment
All is proceeding as I have foreseen. LOL
Working as intended.
Less emissions, less economic activity, less people with lower standards of living.
Green policy success.
Let that be a salutary lesson to coal fired China as we’re going to become a superpower-
‘Absolute game changer’: Australia can be a ‘renewable energy superpower’ (msn.com)
🙂
I don’t even have to open the link…
Another failure of activists that ignore energy consumption at the consumer level and prefer to “estimate” emissions at a high organizational level.
One thing is assured, the populace will cook their foods and heat their residences.
They didn’t tell you that the closed all the petrol refineries either and that all the fuel is now imported and the price is going higher and higher.
They didn’t tell you that the unemployment figure has rocketed.
They also didn’t tell you the economy is also tanking.
They didn’t tell you that the only people making money is the President, his brother in law Patrice Motsepe and his partner Johann Rupert and the investment community who are investing in Renewable Energy with the GEAPP and getting their paws and snouts wet on the USD8.5 bn promised at Cop26.
They didn’t tell you that they don’t know how the tax payers will ever be able to pay back the loans because there won’t be any left as small business collapse.
But don’t worry you will also be paying for the millions of unemployed monthly stipend of welfare grant UBI/BIG.
Hip Hip Hooray
If South Africa had any aluminum smelters or glass furnaces, they don’t now as they require electricity 24/7 365.