Celebrating 27 years of uniting nurses

COSATU Energy Summit.

COSATU is holding the two-day Energy Summit, as called for by the recent COSATU National Congress, at the Birchwood Hotel in Boksburg between 20 and 21 June 2023.

As the country is preparing its move towards low energy transition, from coal- to low-carbon power generation, there are many areas that the trade union federation is worried about regarding this development.

Key amongst the concerns by the workers are the immediate millions of job losses currently as a result of loadshedding, uncertainty of energy security when the alternative energy generation is fully adopted and coal-fired power generation abandoned as well the pace at which the country must adopt in its Just Energy Transition (JET) efforts.

The current loadshedding that is brought by the current crisis in our coal-powered energy is causing huge disruptions to the different sectors of the economy. This is also affecting workers negatively as they lose income and jobs.

Unions and stakeholders are presenting their perspectives at the Summit on the possible safe and stable solutions to the country’s energy generation.

Firms, farms, companies, hospitals and other public service centers are not operating at their maximum capacity, and, as a result, income and jobs are lost.

But there is also a concern on whether the country is not moving too quickly towards low-carbon generation without any satisfactory evidence of stable power security in future when not too many efforts are put towards ensuring that ESKOM capacity to generate energy is maintained and protected.

The concerns from the unions is that the efforts to solve the country’s power and loadshedding crises are placed at the success of the implementation of the alternative power generation when ESKOM as a state entity will have no rile in the main, which may throw out the window the affordability and access to power by the majority citizens.

The Summit concludes today.

Leave a Comment