A South African court has nullified the environmental authorization for state-owned electricity utility Eskom’s proposed 3,000-megawatt gas-fired power plant. The court cited multiple reasons for its decision, including the failure to adequately consult local residents and consider the full impacts of the power plant’s entire life cycle on climate change. “This ruling shows that environmental authorities must protect people and future generations, not fossil fuel interests,” Yegeshni Moodley of local NGO Groundwork, one of the applicant civil society organizations, told Mongabay. Eskom aimed to build the natural gas power plant in the state-owned Richards Bay Industrial Development Zone (RBIDZ) in the country’s KwaZulu-Natal province. Groundwork and the South Durban Community Environmental Alliance challenged the project at the Pretoria High Court in 2022, arguing, among other points, that the project’s greenhouse gas emissions were inconsistent with South Africa’s commitment to decarbonization. However, the judge ruled in Eskom’s favor. Both nonprofits then challenged the High Court ruling at the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA). The SCA agreed with them, finding that the environmental impact assessment had failed to consider renewable energy alternatives and cumulative impacts associated with gas extraction and transportation, besides inadequate community consultation. The ruling passed in September also found that the environment minister, Dion George, had acted unlawfully in granting approval for the project, as his decision failed to comply with key principles of the National Environmental Management Act (NEMA). The court further noted that the country’s obligations under the Paris Agreement, the Kyoto Protocol, and the U.N. Framework…This article was originally published on Mongabay
