JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – National Treasury must abandon its plans to introduce carbon tax, which will result in the closure of smelters at a time of desperate need for job retention and export promotion.
This is the consensus of opinion canvassed by Mining Weekly Online following last Friday’s release of the Integrated Resource Plan (IRP).
With the IRP enhancing the prospect of carbon emission reduction because of the backing it gives to renewable energy, Treasury’s continued insistence on the imposition of carbon tax is being seen as superfluous. The main purpose of the carbon tax is to generate funding for research and development into carbon emission reduction, which the IRP now promises.
“The need for a carbon tax has declined significantly in the light of the IRP,” a ferrochrome industry source commented to Mining Weekly Online on Tuesday.
State electricity utility Eskom is the source of much of South Africa’s carbon emission. With promulgation and implementation of the IRP, renewable energy generation will increase significantly and result in the carbon intensity of Eskom declining significantly in the next ten to 15 years, pointing to a carbon tax not being needed, as many other countries have found.
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