ESKOM Restructuring – Where are the details, Mr President?

The following letter was written and submitted by Project 90 by 2030 to President Cyril Ramaphosa, with the endorsement of the Energy Governance South Africa (EGSA) members on the 19 February 2019 on ESKOM Restructuring and the lack of details.

Dear President Cyril Ramaphosa,

We write to you as the Energy Governance South Africa (EGSA) network. EGSA is a network of over 80 concerned individuals and organisations dedicated to promoting good governance in the energy sector. Project 90 by 2030 is an environmental non-profit organisation that co-ordinates the EGSA network.

Like everyone else concerned about the provision of energy, we are most concerned about Eskom. For many years there have been calls to restructure Eskom to be fit for purpose in a changing energy landscape. We were pleased to hear in the State of the Nation Address (SONA), that there are indications that this restructuring is finally being tackled, but are concerned about the lack of detail.

The only indication given in the address is the line that “we shall immediately embark on a process of establishing three separate entities – Generation, Transmission and Distribution – under EskomHoldings.” Many questions remain including the following:

Who will the stakeholders be in both the process itself and the final entities? Where will ownership and decision making reside?
What is the envisioned split of public and private sector involvement?
What are the timelines for this process?

How does the restructuring process affect solutions to the enormous debt that Eskom currently has?

We note that the Eskom Sustainability Task Team was created over two months ago, and that their recommendations were to be submitted by the end of January this year. Given the importance of the current Eskom crisis to the nation, we believe that the task team findings should be made public – and that this should be done without further delay.

We look forward to your response on this important issue. Yours sincerely,

Richard Halsey
On behalf of EGSA

richard@90by2030.org.za / 021 674 5094