Abstract
A just and sustainable energy transition in South Africa would entail not only the active mobilization of affected community members in developing energy and infrastructure at scales, in communities, and from sources that have been thus far neglected. It would also explicitly account for the immense and various sources of waste, fraud, abuse and degradation that are intrinsic to the country’s extractive status quo. A hint of what active community mobilization around energy justice can achieve is provided by Operation Khanyisa; but it is unclear whether this success can be broadened nationally or sustained further. The Million Climate Jobs (MCJ) campaign provides a realistic alternative approach to transforming the country’s energy system and broader political economy. Two additional, and potentially complementary, policy options are discussed: state guaranteed employment in the climate jobs sector, and a progressive feed in tariff (FIT).
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Notes
- 1.
BBC (2018a).
- 2.
BBC (2018b).
- 3.
Merten (2019).
- 4.
WaterAid (2017: 26).
- 5.
Saba et al. (2018).
- 6.
Alfreds (2018).
- 7.
BiogasSA sells similar biodigester units for R12,000–R42,000, and has expanded to industrial units of up to 0.05 MW. ENCA (2015).
- 8.
With over a million heads of cattle, South Africa’s cattle industry alone could easily accommodate 579,000 plants, with an estimated total biogas rate of over 67,000 (m3/h), a potential calorific power of 3.6 tWh/yr and estimated electricity potential of 1.26 tWh/yr (Roopnarain and Adeleke 2017: 1174; Okudoh et al. 2014).
- 9.
Burton et al. (2018: 232–235).
- 10.
Head (2019).
- 11.
Merten (2019).
- 12.
Its fatality rate improved by only 33% in the five decades after World War II (whereas the diamond mine fatality rate showed no improvement for seven decades from the 1920s to 1990s). Although South Africa’s worst mining disaster was the 1960 Coalbrook colliery collapse, killing 437 miners, gold mining continues to have an even worse fatality rate. As late as the 1990s, according to one estimate, over a career working two decades underground, the average South African miner (of all ore types) faced a one in thirty chance of dying in an occupational accident. These risks are not merely a result of general mining hazards, but more specifically derive from the racialized violence of South Africa’s industry.
- 13.
Kanabus (2018).
- 14.
See World Bank’s (2017).
- 15.
South Gauteng High Court (2016).
- 16.
Gonzalez (2016).
- 17.
Hello Doctor (2017).
- 18.
Foster et al. (2015).
- 19.
- 20.
BBC (2018c).
- 21.
Makou (2018).
- 22.
Alda and Cuesta (2011).
- 23.
BusinessTech (2016).
- 24.
See SAMI (2018).
- 25.
Klein (2012).
- 26.
Mosler (1997).
- 27.
Developing countries engaging in fiscal expansion have experienced a wide range of outcomes, so policy appears less linear than for OECD countries (see, e.g., Giavazzi et al. 2000).
- 28.
These could include Pay As You Earn (PAYE) and Standard Income Tax on Employees (SITE) levies to the South African Revenue Service (SARS), or gross revenue/salary-related levies to district councils. These may have particular benefits for poor South African women, albeit not as great as increased social grant expenditure; see Budlender et al. (2010). For an early comparative discussion, see Freeman (1992).
- 29.
On universal income grant provision in South Africa, see Marais (2018).
- 30.
Ashley (2018: 281).
- 31.
See, e.g., AIDC (2016) and One Million Climate Jobs (n.d.).
- 32.
As devised by the Alternative Information and Development Centre (AIDC), part of the Climate Action Network and principal organisational advocate for the MCJ (Ashley 2018: 282).
- 33.
The Rhodes Biosure process, a locally developed, first-of its kind solution for treating acid mine water drainage, is arguably the most cost-effective biological treatment option developed to date for reducing sulphates in acid mine water without the external addition of chemicals (Rose 2013).
- 34.
BusinessTech (2017).
- 35.
- 36.
Carbone and Memoli (2015).
- 37.
Ramaphosa (2018).
- 38.
This was first legally enshrined in the 1996 Constitution and subsequently established in the 1998 White Paper on Local Government, which introduced the notion of developmental local government, and the 2000 Local Government Municipal Systems Act, which made the activity of Integrated Development Planning compulsory for local governments. The Department of Provincial and Local Government (DPLG—renamed the Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs in 2009) launched the Local Economic Development Fund in 1999 as part of national government’s poverty alleviation strategy, leading to a proliferation of small projects, most of which collapsed once project funding dried out (Rogerson 2010: 481).
- 39.
- 40.
Fiil-Flynn and Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee (2001: 2).
- 41.
Fiil-Flynn and Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee (2001: 5).
- 42.
Fiil-Flynn and Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee (2001: 1).
- 43.
Fiil-Flynn and Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee (2001: 1–2).
- 44.
Fiil-Flynn and Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee (2001: 2).
- 45.
Bond and Ngwane (2010).
- 46.
Bond and Ngwane (2010: 198).
- 47.
Styan (2015: 97).
- 48.
Quoted in Bond and Ngwane (2010: 203).
- 49.
Styan (2015: 104).
- 50.
DPLG (2006: 17).
- 51.
Tshwane (2018).
- 52.
This section draws on Lawrence (2019).
- 53.
Braunstein and Heintz (2008).
- 54.
The experience of India for example shows that deflationary policies disfavour both women and the rural poor, and by extension, agricultural productivity. When the government increased expenditures on rural development and employment generation, women’s income and agricultural productivity improved; when these budgets were cut, women’s income and agricultural productivity declined and infant mortality sharply increased (Patnaik 2003).
- 55.
- 56.
- 57.
Valodia and Francis (2016).
- 58.
See SAMI (2018).
- 59.
Blecker (2002).
- 60.
Laing (2018).
- 61.
In addition to the $53-billion rail line built to export billion tons of coal on South China Rail locomotives, further examples include the Medupi and Kusile coal-fired power stations costing $15 billion each; and the $17-billion Durban port-petrochemical expansion; the Coega complex (R20 billion), the World Cup stadiums (R27 billion), and the 1999 arms deal (R43 billion)—together costing R1.5 trillion (Bond 2019).
- 62.
Stockhammer (2015).
- 63.
By comparison, in Germany over the past decade, between 40–50% of all citizens (almost 50% in 2012) owned the country’s renewable energy capacity through energy cooperatives and private initiatives, including nearly half of all installed biogas and solar capacity and half of the installed onshore wind capacity (Amelang 2016; Borchert 2015; Nestle 2014). With higher levels of poverty and unemployment, the incentives for a larger proportion of South Africans to participate in similar cooperative arrangements would be greater.
- 64.
IADRC (2003).
- 65.
Economist (1999).
- 66.
Two of South Africa’s top imports are Crude Petroleum ($6.54 billion) and Refined Petroleum ($2.55 billion) (OEC 2018).
- 67.
Mendonça et al. (2009: xxi).
- 68.
Theron (2018).
- 69.
Omarjee (2018).
- 70.
DoE (2016). IEP Annexure B: Macroeconomic Assumptions.
- 71.
Mendonça et al. (2009: 164–166).
- 72.
SALGA (n.d.).
- 73.
- 74.
Abbreviation for megawatt peak, a measuring unit for the maximum output of an intermittent RE source (e.g. a pv plant). One MWp = 1000 kilowatt peak (kWp). 500 MWp would generate about 1–2 GWh per day in SA.
- 75.
Bischof-Niemz (2015: 27).
- 76.
Breytenbach (2017).
- 77.
In 2017, a 50-litre tank with 93 unleaded petrol inland (including tariff costs, discounts, et al.) cost R654 (Wheels24 2017). Assuming 16 km a litre yields a range of 800 km per fill up. The average EV requires 20 kWh to fully recharge; at the current rate of 120 cents per kWh, it would cost R24 to fully recharge (“fill up”) the car. A 2017 Ford Focus Electric has a range of 185 km. Thus, 4.3 recharges = 1 full petrol tank, but cost only R103; thus petrol costs more than six times the cost of electric recharges per km.
- 78.
Assuming 1 sq m of PV generating 2 MWh per year, times 950 = 1.9 GW.
- 79.
Energati (2016).
- 80.
Bischof-Niemz (2015: 27).
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Lawrence, A. (2020). Conclusion: Just an Energy Transition—Or a Just Transition?. In: South Africa’s Energy Transition. Progressive Energy Policy. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18903-7_6
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