By Neelam Rahim

Business Unity South Africa is encouraged by President Cyril Ramaphosa’s comprehensive energy plan and offered its full support and partnership to fast-track delivery. BUSA hopes the comprehensive energy plans announced last night will be implemented with focus and speed.

Joining the discussion is Happy Khambule, BUSA Energy Manager.

BUSA met with the President last week, where he shared Government’s immediate and long-term plans for stabilising and securing the country’s energy supply

According to Khambule, BUSA is happy that the President and his team listened to the broad stakeholder input. 

He says anyone who understands what the President said will appreciate that they are pretty practical and give us a sense of what is urgent, what is long-term, and what can be achieved in the mid-term.

We will be keeping an eye on it, and most companies and organisations that form part of BUSA may play a critical role in coming up with the intervention.

 According to Happy, The President has said the supply industry in terms of electricity is going to be very different. We traditionally had Eskom, and in contemporary times, quite recently, we had small ITT who are starting to fit in, but now it’s expanded even further. 

He says you can also produce power for your use which does not require one to possess a license. Factories and companies with a significant demand can be done by themselves or access the grid capacity through household and shopping malls, including different centres of commerce, to ensure enough power running through the supply, whether at the national or a local distributor level.

Happy tells Radio Islam this is the first in many instances when something is a real solution when a product is viable and commercially appropriate.

He mentions that renewable energy, such as solar panels on roof spaces, is quite a big deal and a significant opportunity for small to medium enterprises. Still, it allows us to manufacture and localise some of the content necessary to create more jobs.

There are a lot of benefits to trying to change the former electricity supply industry. From our side, this is a big step, he said. 

For the full interview, listen to Radio Islam’s podcast below.