South Africa’s Komati Power Station — a 63-year-old plant nestled in the country’s coal belt — provides a cautionary tale of how the “just energy transition” can go badly awry in developing countries. This is a lesson that Dan Marokane, the chief executive of South Africa’s power utility Eskom, believes must be absorbed by other developing nations planning their own transition towards renewable power. In October 2022, South Africa’s government shut down Komati, which at its peak was twice the size of any other in the country, with a capacity of 1,000 megawatts of electricity. The decision was in line with its Just Energy Transition Investment Plan. The town had been entirely built around the plant, which provided jobs to an estimated two-thirds of the residents at one point. Yet when Komati was “repurposed”, many were left without work in a country where unemployment is already 32.9 per cent.
