#PowerToThePeople!

Together, South Africans can save our country from the final collapse of Eskom. We have researched and laid out practical solutions that will make sure South Africa have reliable access to electricity. Our people and economy need this to happen now. With your help, we can generate the pressure for urgent change.

Sign the IRR’s petition to the Minister of Mineral Resources and Energy to demand changes at Eskom!

The petition demands of government the following:

• Keep Eskom as a state-owned generator, while allowing any company to compete against it for the generation and sale of electricity – provided this competition is strictly on a commercial basis and is not skewed by subsidies.
• Eskom must also be depoliticised. It should resume its old function: to provide sufficient, reliable electricity and to cover its costs. Nothing else.
• Eskom should be forbidden from pursuing political, social, or racial ambitions. It must appoint its engineers and other technical staff entirely on merit.
• Eskom’s financial managers must be forced to accept that Eskom’s purpose is to provide a service and not to make a profit. They must also accept that it is happy with a low rate of return (3% real or less) and a long payback time. They must borrow to fund the new stations, with repayment scheduled to take place over a period of some 40 years, and they must manage the debt responsibly.
• Eskom’s transmission system must be taken from it and given to an independent operator. All large-scale generators must be entitled to use the transmission system in return for a reasonable fee, based solely on technical and commercial considerations. Unless current problems of erratic and unnecessary supply can be eliminated, households which generate small amounts of solar power should not be allowed to sell their electricity to the national grid. They will in any event save on the costs of buying from Eskom or other suppliers.
• Electricity distribution should be taken away from municipalities and given to private electrical engineering companies. These will have to compete with one another in supplying final customers, which will help keep their prices down and their efficiency up.
• Energy sources for future electricity generation must be chosen on scientific and commercial grounds, so as to serve the best interests of mankind and the environment. Political ideology must have no say.