A new use for the Big Mac: comparing the cost of electricity in different countries. What I find interesting here is that Canada and South Africa are side by side, near the cheap end of the spectrum of electricity prices. Combine this with the two countries' passive approach to encouraging alternative energy technologies, and you have a recipe for continued reliance on traditional energy sources.
South Africa and Canada have something else in common. The South African government has been luring big industries to the Industrial Development Zone at Coega, and a big catch is Alcan, the Canadian aluminium company ranked number two in the world. Producing a million tons of aluminium a year requires lots of cheap power (1 355 megawatts), so Alcan and Eskom (SA's electricity producer) signed a 25-year agreement last November as part of the deal to locate Alcan at Coega.
Earthlife Africa have noted that this deal relies on selling South Africa's already cheap energy to Alcan at cost. Not only that, but the deal is subsidized by Eskom's plan to spend R6 billion on transmission lines to serve the smelter, and various other public investments in Coega. The primary motivation for Coega is job creation, and I am not knocking that. I'm just curious to know who is paying for all this cheap power, and what will happen to economic sectors that rely on it, when we have to start accounting for its true costs (environmental, social and economic).
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