When the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy launched its urgent tender last August to mitigate load shedding, it had one claimed goal: to get cost-effective power to Eskom as quickly as possible.
But when hopeful bidders looked at the rules of the Risk Mitigation Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme (RMI4P), it seemed to many that there was another agenda at play: channel the lion’s share of the multibillion-rand, 20-year contracts to the budding gas industry.
“Is it really the department’s intention to ensure that renewables [and] batteries… are excluded from participating in this tender?” one exasperated bidder would ask officials in the months that followed.