At a press conference this afternoon, Louise Flanagan, who wrote a useful feature yesterday describing the inside of one of Eskom’s power stations, told me that the company’s sacrificial lamb, Ehud Matya, had described himself to her last Friday afternoon as “head of generation”. By Friday night, however, word was out that he had been ousted, and Eskom confirmed his sidelining to me in an interview on Saturday morning. MiningMX.com quoted Reuters about a management shuffle only yesterday, and the local media carried the story today. One wonders when Matya, a 20-year Eskom veteran, found out that Brian Dames had been given his job.

My comment on his sidelining stands:

If true, Eskom’s sacrificial offering is pitiful. It should enrage the gods of public opinion, instead of appeasing them. And as for Ehud Matya, if he has indeed taken the fall for his employers after more than 20 years of loyal service, this episode would strengthen his CV, not weaken it.

I just returned from a press conference in which the Minister of Minerals and Energy Affairs, Buyelwa Sonjica, explained that “we have been very lax in the use of electricity because it has been cheap”. Yeah, that’s true. It reminded me of what I wrote in October last year: Classic price control crisis. Or in my first post on Eskom, less than a month after this site was started: Eskom: we’re light-years behind, so pony up.

Some points of interest from the press conference are confirmation that switching off geysers will not, in fact, save electricity, but merely shift the load. The ministry’s recommended times for switching the geyser on is between 5:00 and 11:00, and again between 18:00 and 21:00. I fail to see how shifting loads to peak times, rather than to off-peak times is in any way convenient, but hey, the ministry knows best.

Minister Sonjica appeared rather testy when I questioned another suggestion: Using “any alternative energy source for heating and cooking rather than electricity, e.g. gas, coal, wood, etc.” First, she denied having recommended this, though I quoted from the Energy Saving Tips brochure in the media pack. Then she accused me of trying to “spin” the story by asking what the health and pollution impacts of wood and coal fires might be. After all, it is well documented that indoor cooking and heating fires are hazardous, especially to children. Not to mention that it causes lots of visible smog and used to be a major cause of devastating fires. The deputy director-general for electricity did point out that the department will be reviving a programme aimed at educating people how to make cooking and heating fires safer, but a photographer next to me just mumbled: “We made so much progress getting away from Primus [paraffin] stoves and open fires, and now this.”

A representative from Philips was quicker on the ball, spotting an opening to punt his company’s wonderful near-smokeless wood-burning stoves aimed at very poor countries.

The minister also had harsh words for those (like me) who made fun of her comment in parliament that we should “go to sleep earlier”, so we can “grow and become cleverer”. “A good message was trivialised,” she said. Apparently, she hadn’t intended to insult the intelligence of all South Africans, but meant her good message as a jab aimed at opposition MP and former leader of the opposition, Tony Leon, who asked what they should do when the lights go out. “You’re stupid, go to bed early, so you can grow and become cleverer,” she said, apparently only to him. I feel much better now I know only Tony Leon needs to get cleverer.

Per Bylund has had enough of authoritarian, expensive, rat-infested, inefficient rubbish recycling schemes. Even if the overflowing bins are gaudily colour-coded.

As a Swede I get to hear a lot of the myths of how wonderful a country Sweden supposedly is — the “prosperous socialism” it stands for, a role model for the rest of the world. For instance, quite a few friends from around the world have commended me on Swedish recycling polices and the Swedish government’s take on coercive environmentalism.

The way it has been presented to me, Sweden has succeeded with what most other governments at best dream about: creating an efficient and profitable national system for saving the environment through large-scale recycling. And the people are all in on it! Everybody’s recycling. […]

Even [Lena] Askling, [a columnist for Sweden’s top socialist newspaper, Aftonbladet,] who writes socialist propaganda for a living, knows the Swedish recycling scheme doesn’t work; and she concludes it is in need of more market.

Please enlighten me, wherein lies the so-often-acclaimed success of this system?

His rant covers the issue in great detail. The whole thing is worth a read. It does an admirable job at shattering yet another myth about the famed socialist utopia of Sweden.

Another knighted saint-in-the-making is spouting sanctimonious rubbish. This time it’s the former CEO of Shell.

“If the world is to end the threat from climate change, we need to produce more with less energy,” says Mark Moody Stuart in a column on the BBC website. He’s both entirely wrong, and perfectly right. Climate will continue changing and present threats, whether we produce more with less energy or not. But producing more with less energy is worth doing for its own sake. Sounds like profit to me. Okay, so far we agree.

“To address the climate challenge we need to reduce the carbon content of our energy by at least half,” he continues. But Sir Mark, that’s exactly what we’ve been doing anyway! I’m surprised you didn’t know this!

From a chapter on decarbonisation by Nebojsa Nakicenovic, in a United Nations University textbook chapter on the subject, I’ve copied this chart (note that the Y-axis doesn’t start at the origin):

And that’s where Moody Stuart goes off the rails. Claiming that he’s a great believer in consumer choice and markets, he proceeds to demand government regulation. In fact, quoted in a follow-up article, he’s quite explicit. He wants inefficient cars banned outright, and wants “very tough” efficiency standards imposed on other sectors too.

“Nobody needs a car that does 10-15mpg,” he says. So much for consumer choice.

The idea of government regulation of commerce and trade is, of course, as old as the hills. It’s usually made either by people who don’t understand commerce and trade, or by people who have a vested interest in government protection from competition.

You can bet your bottom dollar if a company or businessman lobbies for regulation, they stand to gain from it, somehow. Usually, CEOs gab about how governments should enforce their personal ideals of social or environmental consciousness only after they’ve retired. When they don’t, it’s because they have a vested business interest in regulation. They may, for example, have cornered a niche in social or environmental consciousness. Or they might feel their own company stands more to gain (or less to lose) from regulations than their competitors.

Take this Moody Stuart fellow, for example. What might his interests be? Creating a fluffy, green image for Shell? Perhaps. I know this is a huge issue for Shell (as I’m sure it is for other oil companies). Oil companies spend millions upon millions to do and say all the right things. It’s good marketing and good corporate politics. But he’s no longer CEO of Shell, and I can’t remember him being so adamant about fuel efficiency and “very tough” standards when he was actually in charge — even though it has been an issue, one way or another, since the 1970s.

But what other motives might he have? Well, let’s see. Now that he’s retired from Shell, he is a director at Accenture and a member of the Global Reporting Initiative. Now he’s suddenly demanding regulations. Guess who gets to “help” companies meet these regulations, at top-dollar hourly rates? Bingo, you guessed it: the GRI and Accenture.

I’m pretty sure there’s a benefit to Anglo-American of such regulations too. After all, Moody-Stuart is also chairman of Anglo, and he wouldn’t be demanding laws that would hurt Anglo. Perhaps it’s just that he wants other industries to be as heavily regulated as mining, to level the playing field for competition to attract capital. Or he wants to build a green and fluffy image at Anglo too. It could simply be something as crude as increasing the market (by government fiat) for profitable mining by-products to go into these fancier cars.

Just because the retired CEO of an oil company said more govenrment regulation is a good idea doesn’t mean it actually is a good idea.

Some retired CEOs waffle far too much. Perhaps they should be put out of our misery upon retirement. “Here, sir, your golden handshake, and your golden handgun. Thank you, and farewell.”

Imagine. That would profit Anglo American too.