Signs of hope for Karpowership with Minister’s ruling

South Africa's Minister of Forestry, Fisheries & the Environment Dion George has ruled in favour of the controversial Turkish powerships proposal for Richards Bay harbour. This despite strong indications from Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa that the entire Karpowership plan is dead in the water. George recently dismissed an appeal by two environmental justice groups against his department’s decision to grant environmental authorisation to Karpowership to moor two powerships in Richards Bay harbour to supply ‘emergency power’ to the Eskom grid. In his 187-page ruling, George rejected all 15 grounds of appeal by the Centre for Environmental Rights, acting on behalf of groundWork and the South Durban Community Environmental Alliance (SDCEA). The Daily Maverick reports that George appears to have been legally obliged to make a ruling on the appeal, even if his decision is rendered academic by other approval hurdles facing Karpowership. Significantly, however, George’s Democratic Alliance has previously voiced strong criticism of what it described as the ANC government ‘bending over backwards to ensure that the Karpowership deal is pushed through at all costs’.

Now, George’s decision has raised questions about whether the Turkish company has indeed thrown in the towel for good – or is still hoping to salvage its plans to supply ‘emergency’ powerships in three local harbours (Richards Bay, Saldanha and Coega). Since the controversial plan surfaced in 2020, the Turkish group has faced a series of legal, environmental, regulatory and procedural battles to gain authorisation for the multibillion-rand proposal. Karpowership has not responded to questions emailed by DM on whether it was walking away from the proposal, but TimesLIVE quoted Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa previously saying the Karpowership deal was ‘off the table’. George’s decision has thrown a potential lifeline to Karpowership to pursue the 20-year ‘emergency’ power supply deal by removing obstacles to environmental approval – even though Karpowership has lost Eskom grid access and is still embroiled in legal disputes with its local empowerment partner, Powergroup SA, and faces another court case involving the National Energy Regulator’s refusal to disclose the full terms of its decision to grant Karpowership generation licences. In his decision, George said: ‘Load shedding is still very much part of SA’s daily existence’ and that he was satisfied that the Karpowership deal was still ‘needed and desirable’. He said affected parties had 180 days to take his internal appeal decision to court for judicial review.

Reacting to the decision on 31 July, Centre for Environmental Rights (CER) attorney Michelle Koyama said: ‘We are highly disappointed by the Minister’s decision to uphold the appeal, given that South Africans can ill-afford such expensive electricity and the resulting rising costs of basic goods when cheaper [energy] alternatives exist. The public and government also cannot afford to continuously pay for damages to people and infrastructure from floods, droughts and other extreme weather events, which will intensify as climate-harming activities such as this persist.' DM notes that George dismissed all 15 grounds of the CER appeal as ‘lacking merit’, while the Istanbul-based Karpowership group, in its submissions to the Minister, claimed that groundWork and the SDCEA were ‘linked to a foreign-funded scheme bent on vilifying natural gas and promoting renewable energy at all costs despite scientific and industry evidence that SA cannot rely exclusively on renewable energy'.