How long South Africa will still use coal power stations

[Hanno Labuschagne]

How long South Africa will still use coal power stations

In the rolling hills of South Africa’s Mpumalanga province, hundreds of builders, welders and engineers are putting the final touches to a gigantic new power station that’s set to burn as much as 15 million tonnes of coal a year until it is eventually shuttered in 2073.

The 4,800-megawatt, dry-cooled Kusile plant and the almost identical Medupi facility, which was completed last year, will be key to meeting demand for energy in a country that’s been plagued by rolling blackouts since 2008.

[Bloomberg]

 

[rietrot]

Forever. Or until we have no more electricity and 22 hours of loadshedding a day.

 

[Drifter]

At the rate of Eskom collapse, they need to keep the working ones going as long as possible.

 

[mojoman]

For as long as they can...

 

[AlphaJohn]

Follow the money?

 

[Easter Bunny]

government will stick to coal because nobody has figured out a semi-believable tender system for supplying sunshine and wind.

 

[calypso]

The coal plants barely work now, what makes one think that they gonna be working in 50 years time.

 

[RedViking]

 

[G.A.S]

Dear Greenpeace.

Please pay for and build us the renewable generation.

Regards,

Citizens suffering from loadshedding and the SA Taxpayer

 

[hj007]

Dear Greenpeace.

Please pay for and build us the renewable generation.

Regards,

Citizens suffering from loadshedding and the SA Taxpayer

By the time we have renewables, Greenpeace will be chaining themselves to the wind turbines due to its polluting nature in the form of using too much steel / carbon / plastics and general bird killing.

Activists going to Activist.

But less coal pollution / carbon capture would be great. I wonder how we'll be able to reduce coal emission as a form of general heating though? JHB pretty brown in winter.

 

[cn@]

Has The nuclear powerplant, Koeberg in Cape Town not been working well?
Why don't we build more like that.

 

[zeb]

For as long as there are coal reserves there will be coal fired power stations. Not only here but all around the world.

 

[wingnut771]

Has The nuclear powerplant, Koeberg in Cape Town not been working well?
Why don't we build more like that.

You don't need a thousand truck drivers to supply it.

 

[cn@]

You don't need a thousand truck drivers to supply it.

So we are ****ing up a national economy (consisting of millions of workers - blue, white, gold collar workers) just to supply work to a number of thousand coal miners and other distributed jobs.

 

[wingnut771]

So we are ****ing up a national economy (consisting of millions of workers - blue, white, gold collar workers) just to supply work to a number of thousand coal miners and other distributed jobs.

Pretty much.

 

[Harmonic]

Dear Greenpeace.

Please pay for and build us the renewable generation.

Regards,

Citizens suffering from loadshedding and the SA Taxpayer freeloader

Fixed it for you

 

[mypetcow]

Not if private investment can help it...

 

[G.A.S]

By the time we have renewables, Greenpeace will be chaining themselves to the wind turbines due to its polluting nature in the form of using too much steel / carbon / plastics and general bird killing.

Activists going to Activist.

But less coal pollution / carbon capture would be great. I wonder how we'll be able to reduce coal emission as a form of general heating though? JHB pretty brown in winter.

If there was an cheap, easy and efficient way to store renewable electricity, one could easily resort to electrical heating. But unfortunately the latter uses a ton of electricity at around 2kW per heater running for hours at a time.

 

[Zophos]

Well, seeing that we have a fairly good coastline, maybe we should look into this:

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/03/wave-energy-ocean-electricity-renewables/

 

[porchrat]

Has The nuclear powerplant, Koeberg in Cape Town not been working well?
Why don't we build more like that.

You've seen the build quality with Kusile and Medupi.

You want that done with nuclear?

EDIT: actually now that I think about it it's a great idea. Put a lot of them in KZN and the Eastern Cape. Maybe Limpopo too.