Andre de Ruyter under siege

Eskom director Clive le Roux says the previous board and former chief executive Andre de Ruyter’s green energy initiative led to significant problems at the power utility.

Le Roux shared this information during a parliamentary portfolio committee hearing on electricity and energy on 14 May 2025.

The Eskom director said his board inherited a picture from a previous board and the previous chief executive that was focused on addressing clean energy.

Le Roux said this resulted in Eskom’s coal power plant staff feeling neglected, left out, and that they had no future.

“The decommissioning plan produced by that board and chief executive was a fast shutdown of all the coal plant units in something called the 2035 production plan,” he said.

“The consequence of that plan was that Eskom would be shutting down coal-fired power plants for the sake of clean energy.”

This was at a time when the penetration of clean energy was going slower than the Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) had forecast.

He added that during this period, South Africa experienced far more load-shedding than it would have liked.

The new Eskom board removed the 2035 production plan and replaced it with a new six-year plan adopted in 2024, which will still run for the next five years.

This is because Eskom’s environmental impact has not yet been clarified regarding the decision to keep some of the old power stations online.

With the 2030 plan, Eskom will only take coal power stations offline if the performance of the remaining fleet – independent power producers and Eskom – meets the country’s demands.

“Instead of taking coal-fired power stations offline to meet CO2 commitments, we will keep them on to meet an economic growth perspective,” he said.

“The current view of this board and Eskom executives is to run the coal power plants as needed to stop load-shedding.”

Le Roux said this is a significant shift in what was previously happening in Eskom. It is one of the contributors to improving the morale of the staff located at those power stations.

“They have now become useful to the economy instead of being useless in the previous picture of shutting down coal plants as fast as possible,” he said.

Andre de Ruyter’s green energy initiatives

During his tenure as Eskom’s CEO, Andre de Ruyter began the development of a comprehensive corporate strategy aimed at accelerating the decarbonisation of the utility.

Eskom was the largest emitter of greenhouse gases on the African continent, a fact that De Ruyter sought to address.

This strategy involved a Just Energy Transition (JET) plan, which included creating a dedicated office to facilitate the repurposing and repowering of decommissioned power stations.

In 2022, De Ruyter said he wanted Mpumalanga to be the focal point for investment in renewable energy generation capacity.

This region was selected to use the province’s well-established transmission grid and to mitigate the potential for mass unemployment in the province.

He said this green energy transition was needed as coal-fired power stations were systematically decommissioned over the next decade.

Mpumalanga has rich coal reserves, accounting for approximately 80% of the country’s total coal output. It has traditionally been a proud coal energy producer.

These initiatives demonstrated de Ruyter’s commitment to a sustainable energy future for South Africa and continued beyond his tenure as Eskom chief executive.

After he left Eskom, he served as a visiting senior fellow at Yale University’s prestigious Jackson School of Global Affairs.

At Yale, he lectured on critical topics, including the just energy transition and climate finance, sharing his knowledge and insights with students and faculty.

His research focused on exploring climate financing options and carbon market reform, particularly as they apply to developing countries.

De Ruyter was recently appointed as a board member at Verra, the world’s leading standards setter for climate action and sustainable development.