South Africa must balance the need to reduce emissions with increasing access to electricity and developing its natural resources, according to the country’s energy minister.
“We cannot be about decarbonisation alone,” Mineral Resources and Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe said in a televised speech in Johannesburg on Friday. “We have to deal with energy poverty.”
South Africa’s transition from a reliance on coal to cleaner energy sources is a massive undertaking that includes changing a major social aspect centered on mining the dirtiest fossil fuel. Mantashe’s position has complicated the implementation of an $8.5 billion pledge by rich nations to help South Africa transition to green energy.
@DMRE_ZA minister @GwedeMantashe1:- Just transition must be people-centred and consider the socio-economic conditions of communities directly affected by the transition, such as the Mpumalanga coal belt communities. #JustEnergyTransition pic.twitter.com/ZOsIgRlBQc
— Department of Mineral Resources and Energy (@DMRE_ZA) June 30, 2023
Mantashe, a former mine worker and union leader who has previously said he has no problem being labeled a “coal fundamentalist,” has overseen a stop-and-start program to boost renewable energy generation.
South Africans “must never allow ourselves to be surrounded by developed nations who fund lobbyists to pit our country’s development needs against their own environmental protection,” he said. “Our country deserves an opportunity to transition at the pace and scale determined by its citizens.”
The country has a number of offshore oil and gas prospects, demonstrated by recent discoveries in neighboring Namibia, but searches for the resources have been blocked by environmental groups, according to Mantashe. “Every time we touch this, we go to court. Touch him, go to court.”
Environmental concerns must be balanced with development, he said.
