Civil Society Organizations have taken South Africa to court over new plans to establish a new coal power plant.
South Africa (SA) already has 15 coal plants with a capacity of 38,000 Mega Watts (MW) and she is the 12th largest emitter of green house gases in the world.
The plan is to built a 1,500 MW new coal power plant in line with the Integrated Resource Plan of 2019.
This is bad news considering that the country secured $8.5 billion from rich countries during the COP 26 in Glasgow, Scotland to enable her speed up the shift from coal.
The lawyers of Vukani, Ground work and African Climate Alliance wrote a letter to Gwede Mantashe- Minister for Mineral Resources and Energy as well as NASRA (regulator) demanding that they scrap the plan to construct a new coal powered plant.
“There is no justifiable basis for the limitation of constitutional rights because cleaner and less harmful renewable energy is both a feasible and cheaper alternative to new coal power,” the statement read in part.
Minister Mantashe has in the past argued that the transition to renewable energy should not be rushed.
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