Eskom backtracks on Coega smelter

FACED WITH mounting
criticism over power
outages Eskom has warned
that South Africa cannot
afford large new energyexpensive
projects until at
least 2013 when the first of
the new power stations will
come on stream.
Eskom’s warning to
government includes the
aluminium smelter at
Coega, which in operation
would consume 1350
megawatts or 3.5% of
Eskom’s total electricity
production.
That’s more power
than is currently used
in the entire Nelson
Mandela metropolitan
region, including all of Port
Elizabeth.
The Coega IDZ has been
marketed to potential
foreign investors as having
available cheap electric
power, even though this
power doesn’t yet exist
and what there is would
have to be ‘piped’ in along
transmission lines over long
distances.
Now Eskom is saying what
the majority of South Africans
are thinking. “You don’t sell
what you
don’t have,”
said Eskom’s
financial
director
Bongani
Nqwababa.
He told the
media that
projects such
as the Rio
Tinto/Alcan
aluminium
smelter at Coega and
extensions to BHP Billiton’s
Hillside smelter at Richards
Bay should be placed on hold
and South Africa should stop
marketing itself both locally
and internationally as an
investment destination with
low cost electricity until after
2013.
This should
be done even
if it invoked
penalty clauses such as those in place with Alcan at Coega. Penalties, he pointed out, would cost less than having to build a new power station for the smelter.
What's your view and how have you been affected by the power cuts? Email your comments to: joyo@nowmedia.co.za