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The City of Johannesburg recently held its first Energy Indaba to attract investment in alternative energy solutions and to start the process of bringing on board independent power producers (IPPs) so we can begin offsetting rolling blackouts, which will reach Stage 6 this afternoon. We are clearly dealing with an emergency.

It was announced, as one of the Energy Indaba’s resolutions that the MMC for Environment and Infrastructure Services, Cllr Michael Sun, would lead a delegation from City Power to visit the City of Cape Town Municipality on a benchmarking programme to learn more about their process of procuring IPPs and their progress made on finding alternative and long-term solutions to the energy crisis, which in part means reducing Joburg’s dependency on Eskom.

MMC Sun, Acting CEO of City Power, Ms Tshifularo Mashava, and Director of Energy at City Power, Mr Meyrick Ramatlo, visited the City of Cape Town to meet with the Executive Mayor, Cllr Geordin Hill-Lewis, and MMC for Energy in the City of Cape Town, Cllr Beverly van Rheenen, to embark on site visits to the Steenbras pumped-storage power station and Bloemhof Network Control Centre. 

The benchmarking tour is about learning and joining hands with the City of Cape Town in partnering to advance energy independence. As the City of Joburg, we are not trying to re-invent the wheel, but rather take already established and functioning processes to ensure that our residents have reliable, sustainable, and affordable access to electricity.

Further meetings were held with the Western Cape Provincial Government Premier, Alan Winde, and the Green Economy Unit at the Department of Trade and Economic Development, to understand and learn about their Municipal Energy Resilience Programme (MER). 

This is part of actioning our commitments made to the residents of the City of Johannesburg at the Energy Indaba to improve our electricity supply, create opportunities for energy resilience and attract investment to the City. 

There are no quick solutions, but on 1 July 2022, the rollout of a R1,6-billion capital investment, for the 2022/23 financial year, in City Power’s aged infrastructure will kick-in, so that we are able to upgrade and stabilise the City’s power network to avert the possibility of further breakdowns caused by Eskom’s rolling blackouts.

The frustration and anger of residents is heard, but we appeal with residents for a level of patience as we attend to a multitude of breakages and outages.

Issued by Joburg executive mayor Cllr Mpho Phalatse