South Africa is swimming upstream and IRP 2023 is dampening the outlook for localisation, job creation, and community development, says Nick Hedley.
Aside from prolonging the nation's power crisis, South Africa's latest energy sector roadmap – the Integrated Resource Plan 2023 – will thwart efforts to manufacture components locally.
The draft IRP has come under fire for a number of reasons, and rightly so. Among other things, the energy system modelling relies on obscure and outdated data, such that one can only assume that the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy (DMRE) had a predetermined outcome in mind.