{"id":115454,"date":"2016-03-05T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-03-05T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=115454"},"modified":"2016-03-04T17:45:21","modified_gmt":"2016-03-04T15:45:21","slug":"why-eskom-price-hikes-are-not-high-enough","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/business-opinion\/115454\/why-eskom-price-hikes-are-not-high-enough\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Eskom price hikes are not high enough"},"content":{"rendered":"

The economic output of South Africa is putting us in double jeopardy and our only rescue is to increase productivity, says <\/span>Trist\u00e3o Abro, director at Relight Energy.<\/span><\/p>\n

The recent Eskom electricity price hike of 9.4% has resulted in a lot of anger and negativity from South Africans but Relight Energy\u2019s Director, Trist\u00e3o Abro, is in the minority camp calling for punitive increases.<\/p>\n

In short, his argument is that the electricity price increases will force us as a country, to find ways to be more energy conscious, and therefore be more efficient and productive both as individuals and as businesses.<\/p>\n

He explains that there are numerous comparisons that can be made regarding our electricity pricing in global terms and many reports that sometimes provide conflicting comparisons. What is certain is that RSA is a predominantly coal energy generating country and it would be more relevant to compare ourselves to our peers. Another certainty is that our electricity tariffs are already low when compared globally.<\/p>\n

Putting this into figures: life cycle costs developed by the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) in June 2015 indicate that the prevailing underlying cost of coal produced energy is 9.5 US cents\/kWh.<\/p>\n

At current exchange rates and applying the approved 9.4% increase, our tariff will be at 7.5 US cents.<\/p>\n

What is clear is that we are not even covering costs at this rate. This shortage of generation capacity is negatively affecting our GDP, growth, and productivity.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, if we have to compare the tariff last year to the soon to be increased tariff, our tariff will actually have declined in US$ terms. Since most of our costs are US$ based \u2013 from commodities to equipment \u2013 we can\u2019t avoid the exchange rate impact.<\/p>\n

The only way to improve our exchange rate is to improve our economy through productivity. This will translate into real growth and GDP.<\/p>\n

We also have to consider our efficiency in using energy and here we lag far behind the world. Our energy used to be so cheap that little attention was paid to efficiency in use and design, in industry, buildings and home.<\/p>\n

More on Eskom<\/h3>\n

Eskom to raise electricity prices by nearly 10%<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2018We can\u2019t afford another Eskom price hike\u2019<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Eskom\u2019s argument for a 17% tariff hike<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

40,000 people say no to Eskom tariff hike<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The economic output of South Africa is putting us in double jeopardy and our only rescue is to increase productivity, says Trist\u00e3o Abro, director at Relight Energy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":90548,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,9874],"tags":[1164,26,11202],"class_list":["post-115454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business-opinion","category-energy","tag-eskom","tag-headline","tag-relight-energy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115454"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115454\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":115468,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115454\/revisions\/115468"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/90548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}