Legal Articles and Guides

Eskom and renewable energy developer G7 yesterday sparred in the Gauteng High Court (Johannesburg) in a case with high financial stakes for both the company and the country, which urgently needs new energy capacity added to the grid.

The mystery around the donation of 2m carbon credits to a new Zimbabwean-based carbon exchange platform by the Belarus Africa Foreign Trade Association (Bafta) has deepened with an authoritative industry source reporting that Belarus has never earned carbon credits itself that it could donate.

The last three weeks of load shedding suspensions during the day have significantly impacted SA’s load shedding trendline, which is slowly starting to reflect more positive longer-term trend data.

The Department of Mineral Resources & Energy plans to issue a request for proposals for 2 500MW worth of new nuclear energy projects.

The Department of Transport has given the green light to power supplier Karpowership to have access to the Ports of Ngqura, Durban and Saldanha Bay for 20 years, says a Cape Times report.

The Eastern Cape High Court (Makhanda) has interdicted a primary school principal, Nero Dlamini, from clearing or in any way developing a piece of land close to the pristine Mzamba beach and tidal river on the Wild Coast, which forms part of a coastal conservation area protected by law.

An appeal by the government against a High Court ruling that it must act against air pollution caused by Eskom and Sasol will be heard today, says a Moneyweb report.

If the government’s solar tax incentive for households works well, it could strip municipalities of most of their paying customers, adding to the damage the power crisis is doing to their revenues, the SA Local Government Association (Salga) has warned Parliament.

In a complaint filed with the Department of Forestry, Fisheries & the Environment, the Green Connection says the environmental assessment practitioner, Triplo4, failed to ensure compliance with environmental impact assessment regulations in conducting public participation processes.

The Department of Forestry, Fisheries & the Environment has said sewage water discharge into the ocean around Cape Town poses no immediate threat to the environment and is common practice worldwide.

SA farmers, and by extension farmers across Africa, are a step closer to a court decision on whether or not they can commercially grow GM maize.

An appeal court has increased the prison sentence of a rhino poacher from 11 to 15 years, reports GroundUp. Limpopo High Court (Thohoyandou) Judge Legodi Phatudi, with Judge Thogomelani Tshidada concurring, said the initial sentence given to Mfana Kubai in the Louis Trichardt Regional Court in 2016 was lenient and shockingly inappropriate.

In what a Business Day report calls a potentially game-changing move, the National Treasury has allowed the City of Cape Town to buy privately generated electricity from households and businesses.

A ‘vicious’ combination of vandalism, corruption, sabotage and theft conspired over many years to render Eskom incapable of meeting the country’s electricity demand.

The damage from the collapse of a tailings dam in the diamond-mining town of Jagersfontein in the Free State could run into hundreds of millions of rands, according to human rights attorney Richard Spoor, reports Mail & Guardian.