Urgent action is needed to address South Africa’s infrastructure and maintenance backlogs in the electricity distribution sector, which have now comfortably breached the R30-billion level and which are growing at a rate of R2,5-billion a year, Deputy Energy Minister Barbara Thompson told energy industry practitioners at a conference on Tuesday.

She stressed that the Department of Energy (DoE), which will take over custodianship for the restructuring of the distribution sector when EDI Holdings is officially closed at the end of March, was fully aware of the deficit and of the need to devise plans to deal with it.

As part of the restructuring process, a holistic asset-management initiative is being devised, which would be centrally driven and locally executed. It will follow a phased approach and governed by strict project management principles.

The DoE was also working with the National Treasury to devise a funding mechanism to deal with the investment and maintenance deficits, which resided mainly at the municipal government level. No timeline was provided for the conclusion of this funding plan, however.

Speaking at the 2011 Energy Indaba in Sandton, Thompson also warned that the country’s generation and transmission infrastructure also remained deficient to support South Africa’s growth and development aspirations as outlined in the New Growth Path (NGP).

Therefore, a key consideration in the drafting of the Integrated Energy Plan, which is designed to provide a road map for the energy sector as a whole, would be to align South Africa’s energy plan with the NGP. This process was getting under way.

The next version of the integrated resource plan, or IRP2010, which would be promulgated before April 1, 2011, would seek to guarantee security of supply, as well as diversify the mix away from coal and towards renewable sources and nuclear.

The post-consultation version of the IRP2010 has been written and was presented to the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Energy last week. It would proceed to a Cabinet Committee on March 9, and to the full Cabinet before the end of March.