Robert Hersov argues South Africa's R2.2 trillion energy plan relies too heavily on intermittent renewables, forcing expensive diesel and gas spending. He says the grid is still 83% fossil-fuel dependent and calls for refurbished coal plants, locked-in gas, and nuclear scaled from a footnote to a core anchor for true baseload power.
Chapters
Do you want a quick fix for this country? Burn the coal and drill, baby, drill. South Africa needs power, not promises. Power. And when the lights die, when the lights go out, jobs die. You know this. We all know this. No power means no growth and no country. Simple as that. Government has a plan. It's called the IRP 2025, and it just came out. By 2039, they say we will add about 105 gigawatts. That's like rebuilding Eskom 2.5 times. They call it the biggest investment program of the democratic era of South Africa, and the price tag? 2.2 trillion rand. Let me say that again. 2.2 trillion rand. So what's in this incredible plan? Wind, solar, gas, some nuclear. On paper, it's about 34 gigawatts of wind, 25 gigawatts of solar, 16 gigawatts of gas, but only 5.2 gigawatts of nuclear, plus some storage. Now the truth today, wakey wakey South Africa, our grid still runs mostly on fossil fuels. Got it? In 2024, low carbon was 17%. The rest, about 83%, was fossil, mostly coal. Yes, Eskom performance is improving, and I give a lot of credit to Mthetho Nyati and Dan Marokane at Eskom. Eskom ran 105 straight days without load shedding by the end of August 2025. Energy availability factor was between 64% and 75% through winter. And progress is real. But would you bet your factory on it yet? Exactly. Exactly. So here's the part most people avoid. You can't smelt steel with a press conference. You can't run a mine on a cloudy, windless week. And you can't run a smelter or a turbine just on solar or wind power. You listening, greenies? Intermittent power needs a partner that shows up on demand every hour, every day. That's called base load power. And that partner lately has been diesel peakers, expensive, diesel peakers. In April 2024 alone, OCGT cost about R1.1 billion, down from R3.1 billion in April 2023, but still a very expensive crutch. And from 1 April to the end of October 2025, open cycle gas turbines burned roughly R6 billion to make about 1,000 GWh. That's real money just to keep our lights on. So let's be adults for once. Why don't we just fix what we have? Fix what we've got right now. Phase in the new while the old still works. Tell the truth, count the costs, deliver. So here's the move. Okay, here's what I recommend. Let's refurbish the coal stations that we can save, run them cleaner where it pays to do so. Lock in gas as the flexible partner so wind and solar can balance. And we need to scale nuclear from a footnote to an anchor partner. Start with the 5.5 gigawatts already in the plan and prepare for more. Small modular nuclear reactors are coming. Then grow what's smart, not what's fashionable. Stop listening to the greenies. To understand it all, We have to follow the money. Every blackout costs a job, every diesel bailout costs cash, and every failed import ships our future offshore. We need to keep value here in South Africa, build capacity here, train our people here in South Africa, and judge energy simply by output and price. More kilowatt-hours at a lower cost. If that number goes up, we're winning. If it goes down, change course. I mean, this is like business, okay? And yes, catch up to the world, but let's plan for South Africa's reality. And what we want is energy independence. We want South African energy independence. So clean power passed 40% of global electricity in 2024, and we're at 17%. We've got work to do, and we need firm and baseload power on the way there. Get power right, and everything moves. Prices ease, factories hum, investors return, our engineers stop leaving and start building here in South Africa. Power first, politics later. We need to burn our coal responsibly. Drill gas. Drill, baby, drill. And we need to build the reactors. Keep the lights on. Keep South Africa working. South Africa, we've got to back competence over slogans. So share this message. Follow Truths Report. Tell me what you think in the comments. And this is how we win. Power. First.
