In an interview with Business Times this week, Makwana spoke about the link between Eskom’s climate commitments and the cost of coal supplied to the company. The vast majority of Eskom’s power-generating plants are fired by coal — most of them have outdated, less efficient emission-filtration systems — and the state-owned company has come under particular scrutiny in light of SA’s global commitments to reduce carbon emissions.

“The reality is that we will have to fulfil our climate-change reduction commitments in line with what the country is capable of delivering, given where we are,” Makwana said.

One of SA’s advantages, he pointed out, was that “the quality of our coal is low in sulphur content”.