The Recycling and Economic Development Initiative of South Africa (Redisa) has called on government to pursue workable Waste-to-Energy (WTE) solutions as the new rounds of load shedding have had an impact on the country.

WTE solutions would address the energy crisis in South Africa and answer the increasing high levels of solid waste that are polluting fields and rivers.

Redisa has estimates that at least a million tons each of plastic and paper every year is not being recycled while data from Stats SA 2024 shows that 37% of households have no domestic waste collection.

Through thermal technologies like incineration, gasification and pyrolysis, WTE facilities offer a way to convert solid waste into usable electricity or heat.

Dr Chris Crozier, Executive Committee member, Redisa said: "Every two million tons of waste collected, can generate 100MW of desperately needed baseload power."

"WTE plants are not cheap to build and operate, but the costs are far less than the environmental, health and amenity costs of the unmanaged waste. It represents a worthy long-term investment."

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"Places like Osaka, Vienna, Copenhagen and Singapore use WTE to great effect. It is time for bold thinking on energy, and bold thinking on waste. South Africa can solve two pressing problems, while creating jobs and stimulating economic growth," Hermann Erdmann, CEO, Redisa said.

Load shedding problems

South Africa's load shedding issues for 2025 started at the end of January when the Minister of Electricity Kgosientso Ramokgopa along with Eskom’s Group Chief Executive, Dan Marokane announced that Stage 3 load shedding would commence on January 31.

This load shedding would last until February 2 when it was suspended.

The Stage Three load shedding occurred after more than 10 months of no load shedding.

Eskom implemented Stage 3 load shedding again on February 22. The next day, the power utility announced Stage 6 load shedding due to power station trips.

On February 24, Stage 6 load shedding was downgraded to Stage 4 load shedding and eventually on February 26 it was suspended.

Professor Wikus van Niekerk, an energy expert and the dean of engineering at Stellenbosch University, said that the various load shedding events have demonstrated how small the current reserve margin of Eskom’s generation fleet was.

"The fact that we went from no load shedding to Stage 6 meant Eskom needed 6,000MW or 6GW to stabilise the system, more than the sum of the generators lost during the two events," Van Niekerk said.

Van Niekerk said that all except 400MW were back online on Monday, but Eskom remained at Stage 6, highlighting that there were other issues which the power utility decided not to share with the country.

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