Virtually every company one speaks to these days is intent on generating its own renewable energy, but, when it comes to execution, they are thwarted by official restriction and red tape.

Many mining companies that are exceedingly well placed to generate their own green, clean and cheaper electricity find themselves being forced to mark time because of the National Energy Regulator of South Africa’s (Nersa’s) refusal to permit self-generation beyond the 10 MW mark.

Officialdom refuses to acknowledge that:

• it is unsustainable to force companies to pay more for electricity than what it costs them to produce it themselves;
• it is environmentally damaging to force companies to buy climate-negative electricity when they can produce climate-positive electricity themselves;
• it is unacceptably monopolistic to force companies to rely on electricity from an unreliable source when they can produce it reliably themselves; and
• it is duplicitous for officialdom to be strict in public and lenient in private.

What is disturbing are the stories one hears of Eskom and Nersa being friendly and flexible to some in private, and then witnessing the organisations being unfriendly and rigid in public.

Mining Weekly’s plea is that, if they exercise friendly flexibility with some, they should extend that same friendly flexibility to all. These organisations should ensure that they are always enabling and always intent on creating a better South Africa.

A caller last week told the story of Nersa and Eskom exercising considerable elasticity in the steps taken to find a solution for an agricultural company that is engaged in farming for nine months of the year and in energy-intensive agriprocessing for three months of the year.

The caller reported that the agreement was flexibly reached to allow the agricultural company to feed the excess solar power it generated into the Eskom power grid for nine months, be credited for this at the Eskom tariff, and then receive electricity free of charge during its three electricity-intensive months, until the credit was used up.

The agricultural company’s tariff from Eskom is R1.33/kWh and Eskom then credits the company with the exact same amount for the solar power that it puts into the Eskom grid for the nine-month period.

While Eskom and Nersa are wrong not to share this flexibility with all and sundry publicly, they are even more wrong not to remove all curbs on renewable-energy generation, which is a worthy pursuit.

It is a shame that South African officialdom sees fit to stand in the way of the optimum use of South Africa’s superior sunshine and its prime wind when that same officialdom is too expensive, unacceptably carbon-intensive and on-off with its supply.

Using the sun and wind to generate electricity is not only the most cost-competitive thing to do but also the right thing to do from a climate perspective.

South Africa must accelerate the adoption of efficient, economic, sustainable and ecofriendly modes of electricity generation; restricting solar power to 10 MW bite-sizes is a no-no.