Expert warns that a national state of disaster  for Eskom might lubricate the wheels of corruption

Implementing a national state of disaster  over Eskom load-shedding may be disastrous for South Africa if it is used to enable bad decisions, according to energy expert Chris Yelland.

In an interview with 702, Yelland said that in May 2022, he presented a report urging that a state of disaster be established and providing proper methods to fix South Africa’s energy issue.

“When I suggested a state of disaster about eight months ago in a paper I presented, I had in mind to facilitate and expedite the right decisions, and I proposed what those right decisions were,” he said.

“But, I fear, eight months later, that the state of emergency or disaster may be used to facilitate end expedite the wrong decisions and actions that were not proposed in my paper.”

Yelland stated that declaring a national state of disaster has the ability to assist fix the energy situation if the necessary parties act responsibly.

“But, we’ve seen this before in Covid, where a lot of the wrong things were done, and there was a lot of corruption facilitated by the state of disaster,” he added.

Yelland explained that the first thing that must be done before declaring a state of disaster is to identify the specific remedial actions upfront.

“It should not be just a general, ongoing state of disaster which is nothing more than a blank cheque,” he said.

“One needs to understand and know what specific actions are going to be taken and the cost thereof before one actually declares a state of disaster.”

Yelland outlined some of the steps he feels should be taken to address the country’s energy situation.

These include reducing any red tape that is impeding the widespread deployment of rooftop solar and battery storage for residential, commercial, and agricultural systems.

“Secondly, [South Africa needs] to put out messaging to encourage it, and lastly, to incentivise it through, for example, feed-in-tariffs, wheeling arrangements at a municipal level which are currently blocked, and also tax incentives and rebates,” Yelland said.

“Those are the kind of things where a state of disaster [can give] special specific power for specific intended actions that could achieve a lot quickly.”

Yelland also expressed his concerns about the government’s current state of disaster .

“A big concern that I have is that this, in fact, is not driven by concerns towards South Africa and the effects of load-shedding,” he said.

“My concern is that it is more driven by ANC politics in the face of the looming elections next year. In other words, the real disaster driving this for the ANC is the impact on its party and not the country.

In May 2022, Yelland proposed a “Marshall Plan” to solve South Africa’s energy crisis.

“Feelings of helplessness in the face of load shedding are completely unwarranted,” he said at the time.

“There are indeed solutions available to end load shedding relatively soon, and at a relatively low cost to Eskom and the fiscus.”

Yelland proposed building 10,000MW of renewable energy generation and 5,000MW of battery storage within two years. This would involve removing or amending any obstructive regulations too.