African Wildlife & Environment Issue 74

GENERAL

Dr John Ledger EDITORIAL Many an apocryphal story and lots of hoary jokes start with the words “I’ve got good news and bad news”. So it is with my editorial for this issue of your magazine. The Good News is that South Africa has twenty new Marine Protected Areas (MPAs). Read about this wonderful achievement on page eight. The Bad News is that South Africa has announced its new Integrated Resources Plan for electricity generation up to 2030. The misguided inclusion of a large amount of wind energy means that thousands of birds and bats are going to be maimed and killed by wind turbines in the coming decades.

There is a massive amount of irrelevant verbiage in this 104 page document from the Department of Energy. An incorrect version was initially published under a different Gazette number. The corrected version as cited above came out later. How about that for professionalism in dealing with the country’s energy issues? I searched the 104 pages of this Gazette for the word ‘Environment’. As might be expected from the Department of Energy, their understanding of ‘environment’ is largely limited to pollution, air quality, climate change and social issues. A search for the word ‘biodiversity’ yielded a nil result. So what does the IRP 2019 hold in store for the birds and the bats from now until 2030? I will only summarise the IRP plans for wind energy. Photovoltaic (PV) installations pose minimal threats for wildlife in South Africa. All the energy figures listed below are ‘installed capacity’ in Megawatts (one million Watts). A ‘Watt’ is an international measure of power, or energy per unit of time. Your one-bar electric heater uses 1,000 Watts (one Kilowatt) of power and using it for one hour will cause your electricity meter to tick over by one Kilowatt hour. One thousand similar bar

The 20 marine areas include 17 new MPAs and expansions of the existing Aliwal Shoal MPA, Bird Island (into Addo) and the St Lucia and Maputaland MPAs into a much larger iSimangaliso Wetland Park MPA. This brings the total number of MPAs around South Africa to 41, with an additional large MPA in our Prince Edward Islands territory. The declaration of the MPAs in the Government Gazette follows over ten years of hard work by a team of dedicated marine scientists from a wide range of institutes. We join hands in celebrating this Good News, and thanking all those who worked so hard to achieve this dream. Readers are urged to view the short film at https://youtu.be/LI7Xx21ESoY to learn more about MPAs. The publication of the Electricity Regulation Act (4/2006): Integrated Resource Plan (IRP2019) in Government Gazette No 42784, October 2019, is very Bad News for birds and bats. Readers who have the fortitude to delve into this Government Gazette can find it here: Government Printer, Bosman Street, Private Bag X85, Pretoria, 0001. Contact Centre Tel: 012-748 6200. eMail: info.egazette@gpw.gov.za Publications: Tel: (012) 748 6053, 748 6061, 748 6065.

Description

Year

Capacity (MW) Running Total (MW)

Wind turbines already installed New build already committed

2018 2019 2020 2021 2025 2026 2027 2028 2029 2030

1,980

1,980 2,224 2,524 3,342 3,542 5,042 6,642 8,242 9,842

244 300 818 200

New build as gazetted in IRP 2019

1,500 1,600 1,600 1,600 1,600

11,442

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