How high will food prices climb if there is no break in the worst drought in 34 years? Will water shortages, expected over the next decade, change South Africa’s program to continue building two immense, thirsty, overdue, and expensive coal-fired power plants? How much is South Africa willing to invest in drinking water supply and wastewater treatment networks that have been poorly maintained, say local water authority managers, and need to expand to reach millions of residents and prevent raw sewage from contaminating rivers and lakes?
The problems are not short-term. Neither are the solutions, say authorities and citizens. Supplies of water, energy, and food — the basic resources that drive every human community — are not assured in a nation where demand is growing and the capacity to deliver is in jeopardy.
Arguably, clean water is the resource most at risk, say business leaders and analysts here. A study by the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, the country’s premier science group, found that much like China, the country’s largest water consumers — mining, coal-fired power plants, agriculture, and cities — face big choices about water consumption and use. If current development trends continue, the convergence of population growth, pollution, and business expansion will leave South Africa with a 2.7 billion cubic meter (713 billion gallons) water deficit by 2030. Translated: South Africa will need 20 percent more water than the 13.5 billion cubic meters (3.5 trillion gallons) that it currently draws each year from rivers, lakes, and aquifers.
COAL COUNTRY
Still, the investment in renewable energy is modest compared to South Africa’s devotion to coal as an electricity-generating fuel source. The country has some 50 billion metric tons of coal in reserve, according to government figures. Some 91 percent of South Africa’s electricity is coal-fired. Thousands of people work in the mines, processing plants, and generating stations in a country wracked by joblessness.
National leaders remain devoted to coal and are determined to finish two, 4,800-megawatt, water-consuming, carbon emitting coal-fired stations in Limpopo and Mpumalanga provinces. Yet advancing management, fiscal, and cultural impediments mount steadily at the Medupi and Kusile stations, which are five years overdue and will not be completed until the early 2020s, according to Eskom Holding Ltd., the government-owned utility that is building the plants. The combined price tag, estimated at more than $US 30 billion, grows 11 percent a year.
In early January, the construction manager of the Medupi station left his position after a decade of service. The South African drought is stirring more civic opposition in communities close to both plants. They are concerned about losing the competition for scarce water with plants that need millions of cubic meters annually to operate.
Lastly, the World Bank, which loaned Eskom $US 3.5 billion to complete the project, criticized the utility for failing to assess water supplies needed for plant operations, and publicly stated that it was worried about rising costs and lengthening construction schedules. Last year, in an unusual and candid display of institutional concern, the World Bank formally identified its Eskom loan as “high risk.”
Choke Point: South Africa will report on the Medupi and Kusile power stations, and other facets of the competition for water, energy, and food in this drying nation.
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