Andre de Ruyter stated on Friday, September 16 that Eskom anticipates a final decision on a new $476 million World Bank loan to convert its Komati coal-fired power plant into a renewable station before November’s COP27 climate summit.
As Eskom battles its worst stretch of power outages since it began more than ten years ago, the funds will be used for three packages, including decommissioning some components of the 1,000 megawatt (MW) Komati power plant, which currently only uses one unit to dispatch 125MW of power when needed.
The World Bank loan is separate from the $8.5 billion financial package to help South Africa, one of the world’s biggest polluters, move away from its reliance on coal-fired power plants that supply the bulk of its electricity needs.
“The second one (package) is for the repurposing, which includes 100MW of solar, 150MW of battery storage, and 40-70MW of wind all around Komati. The benefit, of course, is that we can use existing transmission infrastructure, ” De Ruyter told journalists on the sidelines of an oil and gas conference.
The final package is about addressing the “just component” and helping ensure that the impact on employees and contractors in the coal value chain is minimized, he said.
Komati, which was established in 1961 and is located in the Mpumalanga province halfway between Middelburg and Bethel, was shut down for nearly two decades before a decision was made in 2004 to restart it in order to reduce power outages.
De Ruyter stated that last week’s meetings in Washington were “really productive and positive” and that he anticipated a decision on the loan before the end of November.
