{"id":2022,"date":"2018-02-21T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-02-21T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/uncategorized\/2022\/greenpeace-africa-critiques-the-budget-speech-failure-to-support-a-new-energy-future\/"},"modified":"2019-11-06T08:22:47","modified_gmt":"2019-11-06T08:22:47","slug":"greenpeace-africa-critiques-the-budget-speech-failure-to-support-a-new-energy-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/press\/2022\/greenpeace-africa-critiques-the-budget-speech-failure-to-support-a-new-energy-future\/","title":{"rendered":"Greenpeace Africa critiques the budget speech failure to support a new energy future"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"leader\">Johannesburg, 21 February 2018 \u2013 Responding to Minister of Finance Malusi Gigaba\u2019s budget speech, Greenpeace Africa\u2019s Political Advisor, Happy Khambule has said:<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>\u201cThis budget has failed the people of South Africa. The budget shouldn\u2019t be looking to entrench the current minerals energy complex, but should seek to address energy poverty \u2013 particularly universal access to electricity. It is painfully obvious that the problem of energy poverty is not being prioritized. Just like Ramaphosa\u2019s State of the Nation Address (SONA), energy was not addressed directly in Minister Gigaba\u2019s speech, despite current electricity investments in coal and nuclear having massive implications for the country\u2019s economy. Instead, a \u00a0controversial 1% increase in VAT was announced, which will impact on the poorest in this country the most.<\/div>\n<\/p>\n<div>\nIf the government is serious about water scarcity, climate change and a turnaround strategy for Eskom, the only viable option is for the utility\u2019s entire coal-based business model to be completely revised, and for water-intensive projects like mega coal-fired power station Kusile to be cancelled.<\/div>\n<div>\nWhile it is good news that the carbon tax will finally be implemented in 2019, it is heavily delayed and there are serious questions about whether it will be strong enough to make sure polluters pay or that carbon emissions are reduced at all.<\/div>\n<div>\nGreenpeace Africa believes that renewable energy has huge potential to save water, drive inclusive economic growth and job creation, yet once again, this has not been recognised. If the government is serious about addressing the triple challenges of poverty, inequality and unemployment then the barriers to renewable energy must be removed.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Contact details:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><span id=\"docs-internal-guid-54ca0e49-b8e1-96b4-75da-8072736e87f7\">Lerato Ngakane, Greenpeace Africa Climate and Energy Communications Officer, <a href=\"mailto:lngakane@greenpeace.org\">Ingakane@greenpeace.org<script type=\"text\/javascript\"><!-- document.write(dc('Eoi_1', '3A_5D_48_55_14_5F_59_5B_5F_4A_54_5F_5F_48_5D_7A_5F_54_5B_51_5B_5D_54_56'));\/\/--><\/script><\/a>, 0826142676<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div>\n\tJohannesburg, 21 February 2018 &#8211; Responding to Minister of Finance Malusi Gigaba\u2019s budget speech, Greenpeace Africa\u2019s Political Advisor, Happy Khambule has said:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":1752,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"p4_og_title":"","p4_og_description":"","p4_og_image":"","p4_og_image_id":"","p4_seo_canonical_url":"","p4_campaign_name":"","p4_local_project":"","p4_basket_name":"","p4_department":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[26,13],"p4-page-type":[14],"class_list":["post-2022","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-protecttheenvironment","tag-energy","tag-about-us","p4-page-type-press"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2022","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2022"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2022\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2730,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2022\/revisions\/2730"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2022"},{"taxonomy":"p4-page-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/p4-page-type?post=2022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}