[ad_1]
Eskom Holdings, South Africa’s biggest polluter, said it will be charged with providing misleading information to a government air quality official, exceeding emission limits at the Kendal coal-fired power plant and violating its Atmospheric Emission License.
The 4,116 megawatt facility suffered damage to its pollution abatement equipment during a 2018 strike and has since been the subject of a series of environmental department orders related primarily to the emission of particulate matter, which causes respiratory illnesses. . Eskom said the case will be heard on January 28.
Kendal’s troubles have brought the utility’s air pollution to a high of 20 years. Eskom accounts for two-fifths of South Africa’s greenhouse gas emissions and a host of other pollutants, including sulfur dioxide. The department has already ordered the partial closure of the plant so that corrective action can be taken.
“If the court really follows the law and punishes the company for this violation, it would be a milestone,” said Lauri Myllyvirta, principal analyst at the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air, an independent research body. “Eskom has violated and ignored emission control requirements and deadlines with impunity, so any step towards corporate responsibility would be an important step.”
Eskom has argued in the past that closing Kendal would add to the country’s power supply problems. The utility company produces almost all of South Africa’s electricity and intermittently cannot keep up with demand, leading to widespread power outages.
Kendal is the world’s largest dry-cooled indirect power plant, according to the Eskom website. A dry-cooled installation uses less water than a conventional wet-cooled coal-fired power plant.
The case was previously reported by the Daily Maverick news website, which said that supplying misleading data is a criminal offense and that an internal Eskom investigation found that Kendal regularly emits 10 times more particulate material than allowed.
The environment department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
While South Africa is a signatory to the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, the government is already subject to a legal challenge to be heard in May over its alleged failure to control pollution by Eskom and the petrochemical company Sasol Ltd.
