Reacting to the Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan’s budget speech, Greenpeace Africa has said:

With the possibility of a severe rise in the cost of electricity looming over South Africans, the budget speech failed to address, the dire need for ambitious infrastructure investment in renewable energy, which will lower costs of electricity generation and increase access to electricity for all South Africans.

While the proposed  carbon tax  should  ensure that the true cost of carbon intensive industries are included in their costing, its application in 2015 might be too little too late.  Climate change is a present and real threat which requires government to take action now.

Greenpeace is concerned about the support for bio fuels as this detracts from clean energy production and may compromise food security. Investments in renewable energy not only provide a far better option to bio fuels, but  go a long way in addressing  the concerns of job creation as shown in the Energy  [R}evolution scenario.

Greenpeace believes that greater investment in renewable energy technology is urgently required, to transition to a low carbon economy which is free from the polluting effects of coal and dangers of nuclear.