{"id":500823,"date":"2021-06-24T11:35:00","date_gmt":"2021-06-24T09:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=500823"},"modified":"2021-06-24T11:35:00","modified_gmt":"2021-06-24T09:35:00","slug":"government-denies-authorisation-for-controversial-powerships-in-south-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/energy\/500823\/government-denies-authorisation-for-controversial-powerships-in-south-africa\/","title":{"rendered":"Government denies authorisation for controversial powerships in South Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment has refused to authorise Turkey&#8217;s Karpowership on environmental grounds, <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/business\/environment\/south-africa-refuses-karpowership-environmental-authorisations-2021-06-24\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Reuters<\/a><\/strong> reports.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The competent authority in the department has decided, after due consideration of all relevant information, to refuse the applications for the environmental authorisations,&#8221; the department said.<\/p>\n<p>Karpowership was named as a major winner in a government emergency power tender designed to help ease crippling load shedding.<\/p>\n<p>South Africa depends on coal for almost all its electricity generation and sought to procure 2,000 megawatts of emergency power because state-owned utility Eskom can\u2019t meet demand and has subjected the country to intermittent blackouts.<\/p>\n<p>Each power ship contains its own generation, electrical control, and substation components. The ship also includes its own maintenance workshop and engineering capabilities.<\/p>\n<p>The onboard substation can be connected to the national grid without lengthy delays or complicated engineering.<\/p>\n<p>However, the deal has been mired in controversy due to how it was approved, as well as environmental concerns around the ships.<\/p>\n<p>Activists and the Democratic Alliance unsuccessfully pressed for a parliamentary inquiry into the award of preferred bidder status to Karpowership, while a rival bidder sued to have the entire tender scrapped, alleging corruption.<\/p>\n<p>Karpowership has denied wrongdoing and said its bids were more competitive than others.<\/p>\n<p>It is understood that the government&#8217;s decision can still be appealed.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>Read:<a href=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/energy\/489831\/world-bank-could-fund-south-africas-controversial-powerships\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> World bank could fund South Africa\u2019s controversial powerships<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment has refused authorisation to Turkey&#8217;s Karpowership on environmental grounds, Reuters reports.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":370944,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9874],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-500823","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-energy","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500823","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=500823"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500823\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":500829,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500823\/revisions\/500829"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/370944"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=500823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=500823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=500823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}