Prepare for 5 years of load shedding in SA — Ted Blom

JOHANNESBURG — Energy and mining expert Ted Blom always offers rather different opinions on what's gone wrong at Eskom. He touts himself as being energy agnostic and has controversial views about the sustainability of clean sources such as solar and wind in a country like South Africa. Nevertheless, Blom has some interesting insights and experience with regard to what's gone wrong with Eskom's coal supplies of late. Coal supply has become a major factor behind the recent bouts of load shedding in the country, and Blom doesn't hold back any punches in this interview. Take a listen… – Gareth van Zyl 

It's a pleasure to welcome energy expert Ted Blom on the podcast. Ted, now I spoke with you in May this year — back then already you were talking about a "coal cliff". But, in fact, you told Eskom 11 years ago about this coal cliff. Can you give us the backstory to this?

I was hired by the then Eskom's financial director who felt that he was a little bit out of his depth on the coal business and he asked around at Eskom as to who could reliably rebuild Eskom's coal roadmap to 2030, and lo and behold they came up with my name. So I then joined them on a two-year contract and I quickly did some research together with colleagues at Eskom. We reinstated some of the coal planning and then, during that exercise, I picked up that within about an 8—9 year period time Eskom was going to deplete all of its current coal supplies. I didn't actually denote the term "coal cliff", it was actually, I think, the Fossil Fuel Foundation that did that. But at the time, I indicated that around 2015 Eskom would be running out of coal on a drastic basis. And you don't have to be a genius to do something like that, you just need to have access to the right numbers.

___STEADY_PAYWALL___