Eskom’s new chair makes coal costs first target

Mpho Makwana, the new chair of Eskom, has backed incumbent CEO Andre de Ruyter and set his sights on bringing down the price of electricity by reducing the cost of coal supplied to its plants while also improving the quality of the fuel it receives. In an interview with Business Times this week, Makwana spoke about the link between Eskom’s climate commitments and the cost of coal supplied to the company. The vast majority of Eskom’s power-generating plants are fired by coal — most of them have outdated, less efficient emission-filtration systems — and the state-owned company has come under particular scrutiny in light of SA’s global commitments to reduce carbon emissions. “The reality is that we will have to fulfil our climate-change reduction commitments in line with what the country is capable of delivering, given where we are,” Makwana said. One of SA’s advantages, he pointed out, was that “the quality of our coal is low in sulphur content”.