New Coal Power Generation in South Africa in Light of South Africa's Climate Fair Share

This report provides evidence that the building of 1500MW of new coal power generating capacity – as specified in the 2019 Integrated Resource Plan for Electricity update (IPR 2019) – is inconsistent with South Africa’s efforts to undertake its fair share of the global mitigation required to adhere to the Paris Agreement temperature goal.

We draw on results obtained from the Climate Equity Reference Framework, a fair share analysis framework supported by a wide range of civil society groups, including several in South Africa. This framework presents an ethically coherent method by which one can dynamically calculate national fair shares for all countries, whatever their development status. It defines a country’s fair share of the global effort in proportion to its share of global capacity for addressing the problem and historic responsibility for causing it. These are the two foundational ethical principles of the Rio Declaration and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

This analysis concludes that while South Africa has a strong claim to international financial, technological, and institutional support to undertake mitigation, it is also obliged to invest the necessary policy attention and material resources in reducing domestic emissions such that they fall below the 274 – 376 MtCO2eq range in 2030.

In contrast, as shown in accompanying analysis (Merven et al, 2021), forcing 1500 MW of new coal capacity into an otherwise least-cost power sector future raises emissions to 455 MtCO2eq in 2030, which is 103 to 180 MtCO2eq above the emission range implied by South Africa’s fair share of a global 1.5°C mitigation trajectory and 78 to 144 MtCO2eq above its fair share of a 1.8°C global trajectory. Thus, this report concludes that forcing in 1500 MW of new coal runs counter to efforts to achieve South Africa’s fair share, introducing unnecessary emissions and raising energy costs.