{"id":604814,"date":"2022-07-08T14:29:36","date_gmt":"2022-07-08T12:29:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=604814"},"modified":"2022-07-08T14:29:36","modified_gmt":"2022-07-08T12:29:36","slug":"dirty-coal-is-keeping-south-africas-inflation-in-check","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/energy\/604814\/dirty-coal-is-keeping-south-africas-inflation-in-check\/","title":{"rendered":"Dirty coal is keeping South Africa\u2019s inflation in check"},"content":{"rendered":"

South Africa\u2019s reliance on coal to generate most of its power makes it an environmental pariah but it\u2019s also helping keep inflation in check, according to S&P Global Ratings.<\/p>\n

While energy prices have soared as European nations scramble to find alternatives to Russian gas supplies following its invasion of Ukraine, South Africa\u2019s power utility Eskom Holdings has been left relatively unscathed.<\/p>\n

“One of the reasons that South Africa\u2019s inflation is more manageable than in certain other countries is because Eskom is largely a coal-fired generator and the coal is locally sourced, mostly under long-term contracts,” Omega Collocott, S&P\u2019s director of corporate ratings for the country said in an interview.<\/p>\n

“That means the world\u2019s 13th-biggest greenhouse gas emitter \u201cironically doesn\u2019t have as much inflationary pressure because of dirty power generation,\u201d she said. Inflation in the Euro-area has averaged 7.9% since March, and 6.1% in South Africa.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Still, South Africans might be hard-pressed to come up with any other redeeming qualities about the utility, which generates over 80% of the nation\u2019s power from coal and is\u00a0closing in\u00a0on record annual power outages just seven months into the year.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhether electricity is off or on is a different story, but I think that\u2019s an interesting observation and may be a bright spot in the dark,\u201d Collocott said.<\/p>\n

\n

Read: New \u2018fuel theft\u2019 trend to look out for in South Africa<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

South Africa\u2019s reliance on coal to generate most of its power makes it an environmental pariah but it\u2019s also helping keep inflation in check, according to S&P Global Ratings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":602954,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9874],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-604814","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\/604814","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\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=604814"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/604814\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":604824,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/604814\/revisions\/604824"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/602954"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=604814"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=604814"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=604814"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}