Two Years After Komati Power Station Shutdown, Communities Grapple With Economic Fallout

KOMATI, SOUTH AFRICA - SEPTEMBER 22: Mduduzi Bonga Shandu (l) helps his friend Salvador Neves to collect coal for cooking on September 22, 2024, in Komati, Mpumalanga Province, South Africa. They both used to work for Komati Power station, but they were laid off, like many others in this shanty town, when it closed in October 2022. All they have now is some left-over free coal from the station that will finish soon. The coal powered station, operated by the government owned company Eskom, was closed in October 2022 and it had a devastating impact on the workers who was laid off as most of them were not offered new jobs. The international community is putting pressure on South Africa to close their fleet of aging coal-fired plants, which provides most of the electricity in the country. The Just Energy Transition Investment Plan, primarily funded by France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the European Union, has pledged about US$8.5 billion to South Africa for phasing out these power stations but its estimated that about US$250 billion (almost R4-trillion) is needed the next decades to finance South Africas transition from coal. Hundreds of thousands of people work in the coal industry in Mpumalanga Province alone and its uncertain how they will be re-trained or get new jobs, many who has no advanced skills. There are about 130 active coal mines (collieries) in Mpumalanga and about 600 closed ones, and the pollution is some of the worst in the world according to a recent report by Greenpeace. (Photo by Per-Anders Pettersson/Getty Images)