Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from November, 2012

Grow Green. Strikes, unemployment. Or electricity?

My letter in the Cape Times today: There are alternatives to the strikes, unemployment and massive problems afflicting South Africa. The population of South Africa is being hampered by government legislation that prevents private people and businesses from selling electricity across the national grid. Yet the energy policy white paper of 2003 says that competition should be allowed. South Africa is at a state of war with itself because of rapidly rising prices and growing unemployment, similar to what is happening in Greece and Italy. The National Planning Commission's report shows exactly how the unemployment figures are massaged and it is not good reading. However, there is an alternative. Safe, green, sustainable, electricity, with the price coming down every year or at the very least never going up again - ever. However, the government sees electricity as a cash cow, instead of realising that electricity is there to grow the economy. If the economy grows there will b...