DURBAN - The FF Plus has said it found it unacceptable that eThekwini Municipality households that use renewable energy remain connected to the municipality’s back-up power system and have to pay more for electricity.
This had emerged during an executive committee meeting last week that the council could lose R1 billion a year as people move towards renewable energy.
From July 1, electricity tariffs in the municipality will increase by 14.56% but consumers of renewable energy will have to pay even more for electricity.
These electricity tariffs would affect mostly those who would be using a hybrid of municipal electricity as well as renewable energy. The municipality announced that electricity tariffs had been placed at 14.56%.
FF Plus eThekwini Metro Council spokesperson Dr Duncan du Bois said the eThekwini council was “making a mockery of President Cyril Ramaphosa’s commitment to increasingly make use of environmentally friendly renewable energy, and is letting the opportunity to become independent of Eskom and be free of load shedding slip through its fingers”.
Du Bois said the FF Plus had always held the view that the country needed to move away from those energy sources that destroyed the environment, and that renewable energy should be prioritised and that households and businesses that convert to alternative energy sources must be given tax incentives and must certainly not be penalised with tariff hikes.
“This is a very serious matter in the FF Plus's eyes because a community that can generate its own energy is one that is liberated from the constraints of an incompetent government,” said Du Bois.
Daily News