Ramaphosa to establish climate change fund

He delivered his State of the Nation Address in Cape Town on Thursday night.

 

However, hours after Ramaphosa's speech Eskom announced the return of stage 4 load shedding stage until further notice.  

 

Ramaphosa's assured South Africans that measures are in place -- through the National Energy Crisis Committee -- to ensure that load shedding becomes a thing of the past. 

 

"To ensure that we never face a similar crisis ever again, we are reforming our energy system to make it more competitive, sustainable and reliable into the future.

 

"We are going to build more than 14,000km of new transmission lines to accommodate renewable energy over the coming years."

 

He say the government has increased the financial pledges for the Just Energy Transition Investment Plan from R170 billion to almost R240 billion.

 

Added to this, Ramaphosa said they've decided to establish a Climate Change Response Fund to address the persistent effects of global warming.

 

"This transition was inspired by the persistent calamities that we've been subjected to. Almost every year KZN experiences massive floods that destroy our infrastructure."

 

On the crisis at Transnet, the president said the government's working to revamp the freight rail system. 

 

"Transnet has appointed an international terminal operator to help expand and improve its largest terminal at the Port of Durban.

 

"And we are overhauling the freight rail system by allowing private rail operators to access the rail network."

 READ: Ramaphosa to sign NHI Bill into law 'soon'

He said there's been an improvement following last year's port backlogs in Durban.

 

"The number of ships waiting to berth at the Port of Durban – which has experienced severe congestion in recent months – has reduced from more than 60 ships in mid-November to just 12 ships at the end of January." 

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