"We should not collapse our economy because they are greedy for green funding," Matashe told a South Africa mining conference in October. Those unions, like Mantashe, are concerned about job losses. Mantashe represents a powerful constituency within the ruling ANC that includes workers' unions on whose support the party depends to win elections. The United States, Britain, France, Germany and the European Union on Tuesday provided that effort a big boost, offering $8.5 billion to help South Africa transition off coal.Įskom's green push, however, has put the company in conflict with Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe, who has called ditching coal "economic suicide." In an effort to secure foreign investment, Eskom is pitching a $10 billion plan to shut most of its coal-fired plants by 2050 and embrace renewables like wind and solar, with financing from wealthy nations. Temperatures in southern Africa are rising twice as fast as the global average, according to the International Panel on Climate Change, pushing the region's northwestern deserts south. This water-stressed country also stands to be one of the big losers from climate change. South Africa is the world's 12th largest greenhouse gas emitter, according to the non-profit Global Carbon Atlas. In a recent filing, it said its main challenge is addressing pollution without hurting "the poor, who are desperate for job opportunities."Īs the United Nations' climate conference, COP26, in Glasgow gets underway this month, coal is in the crosshairs of a global push to replace it with cleaner fuels. "We understand that there are serious health challenges facing communities," she said, adding that the government considers improving air quality "absolutely imperative."īut Creecy's agency - the Department of Fisheries, Forestry and the Environment - has publicly defended its lax enforcement of pollution regulations as an economic necessity in court battles with activists. She said the government still intends to release it at some point. In 2017, British air pollution expert Mike Holland calculated that the health impacts from Eskom’s emissions alone cost South Africa $2.37 billion every year.Įnvironment Minister Barbara Creecy, whose department commissioned the 2019 coal health study, declined to say why it remains unpublished. The area east of Johannesburg is among the world's most polluted, experts say, rivaling Beijing and New Delhi. South Africa’s coal belt is blanketed in smog and coal ash the stink of sulfur pervades. The costs of a mammoth coal industry are also high, and not just for the climate.
South Africa’s coal industry, the world’s fifth largest, employs 90,000 miners, generates 80 per cent of the country’s electricity, and supplies the feedstock for about a quarter of the country’s liquid fuel for vehicles, all at a time of soaring unemployment and frequent blackouts. In producing countries, governments, businesses and local residents often see coal as an economic lifeline. That kind of continuing government support highlights an issue in many coal-dependent nations, from Australia to Indonesia, that is hobbling the transition to cleaner energy.
South Africa's government has since 2015 granted waivers from emissions limits to its indebted state power and fuel companies, Eskom and Sasol, allowing them to save money. It also revealed that nearly a quarter of households in the region, where 3.6 million people live, have children with persistent asthma. The study, a copy of which was reviewed by Reuters, showed more than 5,000 South Africans die annually in the nation's coal belt because the government has failed to fully enforce its own air quality standards. So far, it has not seen the light of day.
The researchers for the state-owned Council for Scientific and Industrial Research had been assured by government authorities that their years-long study would be published, according to three people familiar with the matter. In 2019, scientists working for South Africa's government completed a study on the health impacts of pollution from the country's sprawling coal industry.
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