Diversionary Post-Coal Politics in South Africa
A Chinese Solar-Powered Industrial Zone Controversy
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2641649 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Patrick Bond (0000-0001-6657-7898, University of Johannesburg, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2024 |
| Volume | 15 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 110-130 |
| Publication date | 2024-03-28 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Cosmopolitan Civil Societies An Interdisciplinary Journal (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1837-5391 • E-ISSN: 1837-5391 |
| Publisher | University of Technology, Sydney (UTS) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.5130/ccs.v15.i3.8864 |
| OpenAlex | W4393341726 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 4 |
In September 2021 at a United Nations climate summit in New York, Xi Jinping announced that there would be no further Chinese coal-fired power plants along the Belt and Road Initiative, which stretches as far as South Africa. Instead, the Chinese operator of South Africa's single largest Special Economic Zone proposal - in rural Makhado - and his local allies suggested that solar power could supply energy for the $10 billion project, including high-emissions industrial projects. This raised the question of whether firms engaged in mining, smelting, processing and other carbon-intensive activities would pick 'low-hanging fruits' within the renewable energy sector (instead of that power going into the grid for broader consumption). Their incentive is to do so, in order to safeguard the so-called Minerals-Energy Complex from Western climate sanctions - threatened, on grounds of high CO2-inputs to export products including steel, aluminium and petrochemicals. In spite of a 2022 United Nations Development Programme endorsement of the project, social and environmental resistance has intensified, but the introduction of solar power for high-emissions metal manufacturing presents a special challenge. Two techniques associated with ecological modernisation - natural capital accounting and the Social Cost of Carbon - may prove relevant to civil society critics of 'extractivism', in shifting the narrative further across space, time and scale
Archaeology · Coal · Political science · Politics · History · International Development and Aid · Law
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |