Dear Sputla, please burn more coal.
The Minister of Electricity, Dr Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, known fondly as Sputla, recently said that if he had his way, he would go and restart the Komati Power Station, because an injustice is being done to those communities in the name of a “just” energy transition.
South Africans should be rejoicing at the fact that our government is moving away from their dogmatic environmental commitments, that they made at international forums and towards a more realistic energy path.
What Sputla learned the hard way is a lesson in the Iron Law of Electricity. The term was first coined by energy author Robert Bryce, when he noted that countries such as Pakistan, India, Vietnam, Japan and China are all still burning coal, and that despite the rhetoric of The Western Elite, there seems to be no relationship between politicians who say they are “fighting climate change”, and concrete actions that translate into “decarbonisation”.
This was also the thesis of William Nordhaus who won the Noble Prize in 2018, for his work of integrating climate change into long-run macroeconomic analysis.
The Iron Law of Electricity suggests that countries that move too fast in the direction of decarbonisation will revert to where they started if the policy is not properly implemented, and even green politicians will find themselves snared into internal geopolitical conflicts.
The ANC is not the first government to learn this. In 2018 the French President Emmanuel Macron made the same mistake when he proposed to add a carbon tax on “dirty” diesel. Before he could implement the policy, the men and women of The Firth Republic were out on the streets with the slogan, “the elite speak of the end of the world, when we speak of the end of the month”.
Msieur Macron was elected as being “pro Margaret Thatcher” and “anti-nuclear”. But due to the President crafting policies that attacked the country’s traditional electricity system, the local communities felt threatened and put pressure on the French State to change its policy direction.
Groups such as Les Voix du Nucléaire and the Gillet Jaune started mobilising and community radio stations such as Sud Radio began criticising the government’s ignorance and callous neglect of the French Citizen.
Today, like the ANC, Monsieur Macron has been forced to change course. In fact, France has gone further by renationalising Electricité de France and recommitting to the reconstruction of France’s proud Nuclear Fleet. The French Ouvrier, the worker, gave Macron, “The Davos Man” an important lesson in Geopolitics for construction, that disruptions in an electricity system will threaten a country’s population and trigger the grand strategy.
Read the rest of this piece at: Hügo's Substack.
Hügo Krüger is a South African born Structural/Nuclear Engineer, writer and YouTube podcaster, commentating on topics relating to Energy and Geopolitical Matters, Hügo is married to an Iranian born Mathematician and Artist; the couple resides in Paris.
Photo: Matthew Henry, in Public Domain.
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