Reuters reports that the Eskom chairman Ben Ngubane said on Thursday that plans unveiled in March to decommission five coal-fired power station were not set in stone and could be shelved depending on economic growth and other factors.  

The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) and other unions have threatened strike action over the proposals, which would threaten thousands of jobs in Mpumalanga.  Ngubane said:  “It is a scenario.  If we put in a certain amount of independent power producers (IPPs) then we reduce the capacity space for these power stations.  That would result in mothballing.”  But he added that if the pace of adding IPP projects to the grid did not take place as quickly as anticipated, or if economic growth, which has been flatlining, picked up then the plants would not be shut down.  

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