According to three senior government officials, South Africa will not meet its legally-mandated 2030 carbon emissions objectives under the Paris Climate Agreement because it intends to operate eight coal-fired power stations for longer than anticipated.
With one of the highest per capita emissions worldwide, South Africa ranks 11th in the world for greenhouse gas emissions. It had agreed to reduce emissions from 442 million tonnes in 2020 to between 350 and 420 million tonnes by 2030 as part of the legally binding Paris Climate Accords.
Since electricity accounts for half of its emissions, it intended to achieve this by decommissioning eight coal-fired power units, six of which would be done by 2030 and the remaining one by 2034. However, the transition to a renewable energy strategy has been impeded by bureaucratic delays.
The officials, who all asked not to be identified since the information was not yet public, claimed that this objective was now unachievable due to a power supply issue.
An official from the president’s office stated, “Our models suggest we will miss the 2030 target,” although he also mentioned that a new decommissioning target for 2035 was under consideration. By 2050, South Africa plans to have net zero emissions.
The government is still dedicated to fulfilling its obligations under the Paris Agreement, according to the environment ministry, which supports climate ambitions. It is premature to conclude that the 2030 targets won’t be met, it added.
In an email answer, the ministry stated that it will be sending the UN its most recent report on greenhouse gas inventories prior to the commencement of the COP28 session later this month.
South Africa’s decision coincides with a number of wealthy nations and corporations retreating from their climate commitments, and the UN announced on Wednesday that the output of fossil fuels will more than treble levels commensurate with the 2015 Paris climate targets by 2030.
On Tuesday, Canada’s auditor general declared that the country will fail to meet its 2030 Paris commitments. In September, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak postponed by five years the 2030 prohibition on the sale of new gasoline-powered vehicles.
Global giants in the oil and gas industry, BP, Shell, and Exxon Mobil, have postponed or given up on switching to renewable energy sources in the meantime. Last year, a number of European nations restarted their coal-fired power facilities that had been idle.
Crispian Olver, executive director of the Presidential Climate Commission (PCC), told Reuters in an interview that “it is very hard to be taking working coal-fired plants off the grid in the middle of a power crisis.” He urged South Africa to put the proposal on hold until the crisis is resolved.
August saw Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, the minister of electricity, tell reporters that decommissioning plants had to be postponed “given the crisis… confronting us of existential proportions.” For the previous eighteen months, blackouts that lasted up to ten hours per day have been plaguing South Africa.
A PCC spokesman acknowledged that there were dangers associated with prolonging the life of coal plants. These risks included “reduced trade competitiveness, reduced access to capital, reduced geo-political influence… and the potential loss of existing international support.”
At COP28, an evaluation of nations’ climate targets will be released by Climate Action Tracker (CAT), an independent organisation that monitors the status of the Paris Agreement, according to Catrina Godinho, a climate specialist at the World Bank and CAT member.
Failure to meet emission goals “not only contribute to global climate change… they also negatively affects South Africans who live in areas with high pollution from coal plants,” she stated.
