The by now legendary corruption of the ANC coupled with its obsession with Marxist economics and class warfare has undoubtedly been a huge factor in the collapse of South Africa’s electrical grid, but the influence of the “green energy” lobby has a sorry role to play as well.
South Africa’s unwillingness to maintain, much less upgrade, existing electrical generating capacity has much to do with the idiotic belief that green energy can seamlessly replace it. But reality says otherwise.
The New York Times reports on March 14, 2023 that over the past decade plus, since the wind/solar fad took hold, the country’s coal power plants have been allowed to become “dilapidated” due to poor maintenance and disinvestment. Meanwhile, the focus going back as far as the turn of the century has moved to developing wind and solar resources to provide electricity.
Yes, after all of that effort, the wind generation is up to a full 2% of South Africa’s electricity, and solar 1%.
You just described California …
Or Ontario:
https://ottawacitizen.com/feature/how-solar-energy-dreams-became-a-nightmare-for-the-small-ontario-town-of-blind-river/
“For more than seven years, Blind River has been saddled with a mountain of debt that could threaten its future.
Since 2015, the Citizen has been trying to obtain information about the debt to explain how the tiny town managed to borrow $49.5 million of federal taxpayers’ money, yet years later have seemingly little to show for it.
It turns out, the forces that brought about that debt have direct connections to the nation’s capital: from free-flowing federal money from the former Harper government’s much ballyhooed Economic Action Plan; to Ottawa energy companies Plasco Energy Group and Menova Energy Inc.; to high-profile Ottawa consultant Brian Guest.
It’s a whopping amount of money for a town that last year collected $5.98 million in total taxes.
The town’s been financially debilitated. Given its debt burden and its limited tax revenue, under Ontario law it should no longer be able to borrow any money for capital projects such as roads, ice rinks or community centres.”
Does anyone know what the process is for municipal bankruptcy in canada?
Most municipalities speed loads of OPM and have little to show for it, because none of the people who approve it or propose the spending have any risk when it gets malinvested
The Province is responsible for the financial viability of all municipalities. This is why municipal laws are called “by-laws”.
Blind River could do what it did because the then-governing Ontario Liberals were prepared to let municipalities load up on lots of debt for renewable energy schemes. This is why Kathleen Wynne is now long gone, the provincial perps who carried out the Green Energy Act fled to Ottawa, and why the Ontario Liberals have been reduced to non-party status two elections running. Even the political hand-puppet Wynne who led this admitted a year ago that it was a huge mistake.
I guess she didn’t get on the green act corruption train like most of her fellow travellers
It’s not “class warfare”.
It’s ethnic.
This should be obvious.
The biggest problem is that central planners believe that you can take a 1000MW fuel facility (coal, NG, Nuke, etc) and replace it with the same nameplate capacity “green, renewable” energy facility.
In the process, they also ignore that backup power is required to cover when the facilities aren’t producing any power.
It is as though some in South Africa wanted it to fail.
Don’t be silly … South Africa is simply practicing … environmental JUSTICE. Wherein alllllllll the white man’s energy goes away, and the primitives energy sources replaces it.
I’m afraid PM Scumbag will win again next time, ’24-’25 or if snap election goes this year.
This greenBS set of ideas will be one big reason why. PP will not challenge theIdiot outright (Libranos can’t even keep afloat the country let alone repair; certainly they can’t fix the whole planet, and even more so NOT while China is polluting like there’s no tomorrow).
No, PP will just be lukewarm and say that Conservatives can do smarter and there will be less carbon taxes. Which is lame&weak.
PM Scumbag’s trademark flamboyant BSing will win no pb.
Mostly wrong. It’s the provinces that determine what electrical generation a province has, not the federal government. Are you entirely unaware of the division of federal and provincial powers? Natural resources including electricity generation are exclusively the provincial domain.
environmental standards and health care are also supposed to be the exclusive domain of the provinces, and that hasn’t stopped the federal government interfering.
Watermelons don’t want to know the facts or the math.
They keep yammering about power storage like it’s a thing and carbon pollution like that’s a thing.
Some think blackouts are necessary to save the planet.
These people are borderline insane.
If it were just blackouts, that would be enough, but I recently had a conversation with a Greenist about that movie “How to Blow Up a Pipeline”, where I said destroying infrastructure like that in the winter could lead to thousands of Canadians dying. His literal first sentence was “Yes, but we’re in a climate emergency.” I can’t tell if they’re insane or just evil.
Just think, this is Scott Moe and Saskpower’s dream. If it isn’t, I’m not seeing it in their words and actions. They need to call out this farce for what it is and explain to the dummies in this province why it’s a terrible idea to continually expand our wind and solar and not push back extremely hard on the feds about closing down our coal and natural gas in a few short years.
I believe it’s their own leadership plus the criminals that has stolen vast sums of money from the country more so than the green lobby. Their whole society is breaking down, they don’t have a mail delivery system because too many of their employees open the mail and rob what they can. Trains don’t operate because the tracks are ripped up and stolen. The copper thieves destroy and take what they want. Probably the next crisis will be mass starvation because now they have to import food.
Who is John Galt?
Soon to be followed by Oz. See https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/04/30/a-couple-of-hours-after-liddell-power-station-closed-aemo-issued-a-market-notice/
Almost as if Someone wanted to destroy South Africa as a nation, reduce its population to subsistence, drive away anyone with the brains God gave a herring, then swoop in and scoop up all those beauty natural resources for free.
Gee. I wonder who that might be?
Somebody smart enough to extrapolate the results of handing government functions over to the heathens. Waste of a beautiful and productive land.
the Chinese have been buying farmland all over Africa and putting in large farms. sending farmers and troops is the next step.
And when the country finally goes for it’s terminal shit; as we all predicted – the ANC will do what every other African dictatorships do – blame whitey. And more white farmers and manufacturers will be killed, their land confiscated, etc..etc..etc…
And in 5 to 10 years when they have a telethon to feed the Starving South Africans……I’m gonna turn the channel and watch another fishing show.
James,
I’ll be RVin somewhere when that terminal shit happens…but may well bring a TV w/Sat reception just to watch the “festivities”..S. Africa has been on a downxslide for at least 2 if not more decades….”stome kefers”
Green energy and black power = no electricity
The real underlying issue isnt raw capacity, even though that also is real. So called renewable energy creates great complexity in grid management as the operators deal with variability of supply and frequency control. South Africa has demonstrated its inability to operate a power grid at its most basic and reliable level and is , to say the least, not well placed to deal the complexities of grid operation with a significant penetration of so called renewables. Corruption and societal instability just add another layer to this. Failure seems inevitable.