South Africa’s electricity sector has emerged from a turbulent decade that has been tarnished by corruption and mismanagement. Vested political interests within the electricity industry here could still be locking the continent’s biggest carbon emitter on its current course as one of the dirtiest and most energy-intensive economies in the world, writes Leonie Joubert. Evidence of corruption and vested political interests within the South African electricity sector have been surfacing on almost every transparency platform in the past few years: the public protector’s State of Capture inquiry in 2016, and various legal commissions that domino-ed out of that investigation; legal submissions in various court processes, including one challenging the state’s nuclear procurement processes; and much of the associated media coverage. These dirty dealings have surfaced in the government’s attempt to assign Russia to build a fleet of six nuclear power stations here, even though the Treasury showed that the cost would cripple the economy. It came through in the commissioning of various new coal-fired power plants. It skewed the numbers used in the modelling process … Continue reading Big money skews South Africa’s fossil fuelled economy