Eskom urged to quit coal even as new plants being built

Bloomberg

Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd should quit coal-fired generation over the next 20 years, Greenpeace Africa said, even as the beleaguered South African power utility presses ahead with new plants. Such a shift would require a massive overhaul at Eskom since coal-fed power is the backbone of its fleet, with two new stations currently under construction. But the debt-strapped utility, which supplies more than 90 percent of South Africa’s electricity, is under fire from environmental groups who claim it’s far from ready for the global transition to cleaner fuels.
“Eskom’s reform is almost laughably overdue,” Happy Khambule, Greenpeace Africa’s senior political adviser, said in a statement. “The utility is technically insolvent, inefficient, unable to guarantee security of supply, wildly unprepared for an energy transition to renewable energy and is the country’s biggest emitter of toxic pollutants and greenhouse gases.”