South Africa’s climate policy suggested the government could delay retiring its ageing coal-fired power plants to address electricity shortages and claims a power crisis had put the country “on track” to meet its climate goals. African National Congress ruled Eskom to abide the decommissioning to help minimize rolling electricity outages. Due to South Africa relying on coal, 430 megatons of CO2 was produced in 2021. It should be noted that South Africa is in a committed plan to shift away from coal and accelerate to solar and wind energy (Being partly funded to the tune of $8.5 billion by the United States, Britain, France, Germany and the European Union). South Africa’s national target for emissions reductions is 398-510 MtCO2e by 2025, and 350-420 MtCO2e by 2030. Eskom has been implementing power cuts that last more than 10 hours a day for most households.
South Africa realizing keeping/maintaining its coal plants is actually more money and work rather to just let them die off when they’re done is great. No harm in laying off the decommission for a couple years as their national determined contributions to emission reductions wouldn’t be fundamentally affected. Executive director of the Presidential Climate Commission (PCC), Crispian Olver, even claimed South Africa has been making great emission reduction process due to the anemic economic growth and power cuts. This decommission is crucial for South Africa as their the world’s 14th biggest carbon emitter which says a lot considering they’re ahead other countries with bigger economies such as Mexico and Britain. Reaching these climate goals are also crucial for South Africa as it’ll be what allows them to transition into a more sustainable economy.
Every time a country steps forwards towards environmental changes helps global warming and south Africa’s intentions are positive. If South America ends up not holding up their end to accelerate towards solar and wind energy they will no longer have proper allies to fund them and lose a lot of trust with some of their major allies causing them to spiral into economic, environmental, and political issues. It could be possible if South Africa doesn’t follow through with their plans they’ll be in big trouble by the climate police and the ICC.