Over the years I have ended-up doing a fair amount of work and commentary on the state-owned power utility Eskom and associated energy policy issues in South Africa, including recently with my collaborator Mike Muller. The intention of this page is to put all these contributions in one place. Loadshedding (power outages) and the broader state of electricity and energy are now arguably the most pressing policy issue in the country, exceeding even the severe state of unemployment.
The contributions are ordered from most recent to oldest and range from television interviews to some detailed pieces of policy research. (There will likely be some interviews missing initially but I will add these as I remember or come across them).
Interview with Newzroom Afrika on the announcements in the 2023 Budget pertaining to Eskom and the departure of the CEO Andre De Ruyter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NK1V8zEGPng
Interview with Newzroom Afrika on crisis consultations in January 2023: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRAyvJBQOPk
Interview with Newzroom Afrika in September 2022 on the new Eskom board, including concerns about conflicts of interest among some board members as well as more broadly in the energy policy space: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XUDjoZI8Jc
Interview with the SABC in September 2022 on the energy crisis in South Africa: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7jxKr6jnXk
Slides from a presentation at the TIPS Annual Forum: http://forum.tips.org.za/images/TIPS_Forum_2022_The_unjust_impact_of_domestic_political_economies_and_global_geopolitics_on_South_Africas_energy_transition.pdf
Video of the TIPS Forum presentation is here (00:02:30-00:20:30, and for Q&A from 01:06:20): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qStiHeLrjRs&t=1182s
Interview with Newzroom Afrika in August 2022 on proposed higher electricity connection fees: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFBDgjCB9D4 (builds on article below)
Article for The Conversation in August 2022 arguing that higher electricity connection fees are actually a good thing because they make the wealthy pay more of their share and reduce/combat the utility ‘death spiral’: https://theconversation.com/higher-electricity-connection-fees-in-south-africa-a-good-and-necessary-next-step-188299 (we noted the need for such fees in a previous article – see below)
Two co-authored op-eds on geopolitics of the energy transition, reproduced here:
Proposed/claimed solutions to the electricity crisis would not work: https://theconversation.com/higher-electricity-connection-fees-in-south-africa-a-good-and-necessary-next-step-188299 (written in 2020 and the evidence since then supports these arguments)
Article for The Conversation in March 2019 explaining why the restructuring of Eskom would not resolve the loadshedding problem and could even make it worse: https://theconversation.com/why-restructuring-south-africas-power-utility-wont-end-the-blackouts-114333
Briefing (and accompanying slides) for the Parliament of South Africa on proposed special fiscal transfers to Eskom: https://pmg.org.za/committee-meeting/21099/
Lengthy and detailed report for the Parliament of South Africa in 2015 on the financing of state-owned enterprises: http://pmg-assets.s3-website-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/150812report.pdf