- Mantashe’s position has complicated the implementation of an $8.5 billion pledge by rich nations to help South Africa move to green energy.
- According to the nation’s energy minister, South Africa must balance reducing emissions with increasing electricity access and developing its natural resources.
According to the nation’s energy minister, South Africa must balance the need to cut emissions with increasing electricity access and developing its natural resources. According to the nation’s energy minister, South Africa must balance reducing emissions with increasing electricity access and expanding its natural resources. “We can’t be only about decarbonization,” Minister of Mineral Resources and Energy Gwede Mantashe said in a televised speech in Johannesburg on Friday. “We must deal with energy poverty.”
South Africa’s transition from a reliance on coal to cleaner sources of power is a massive undertaking that includes changing a significant social aspect centred on mining the dirtiest fossil fuel. Mantashe’s position has complicated the implementation of an $8.5 billion pledge by rich nations to help South Africa move to green energy. The Minister said Just Transition must be people-centred and consider the socio-economic conditions of communities directly affected by the transition, such as the communities in the Mpumalanga coal belt. Mantashe, a former mine worker and labour union leader who has previously said he doesn’t have a problem identifying as a “coal fundamentalist,” has overseen a stop-start program to boost renewable power generation.
South Africans must “never allow ourselves to be encircled by the developed nations who fund lobbyists to pit our country’s developmental needs against their self-serving protection of the environment,” he said. “Our country deserves an opportunity to transition at pace and scale determined by its citizens.” The country has several offshore oil and gas prospects, proven by recent discoveries in neighbouring Namibia. Still, searches for the resources have been blocked by environmental groups, according to Mantashe. “Every time we touch that, we go to court. Touch it, go to court.”