The latest edition of the Integrated Resource Plan for electricity, dubbed IRP 2025, has been gazetted and its contents have not really come as any surprise. But that does not suggest it does not contain shocks.

This lack of surprise arises from the fact that, from the very start, the two Ministers responsible for the updating (which incidentally is meant to happen yearly, but always gets bogged down in years of political horse-trading that tends to crowd out the technoeconomic analysis) continuously signalled that they were in favour of placating various interests under the ‘energy mix’ banner.

To be sure, there will always be a mix of technologies. However, in the South African context, this phrase has mainly come to mean three things: retaining coal for as long as possible; making room for gas; and forcing in nuclear.

The IRP 2025 ticks all these boxes, but with some nuance.

To the credit of the authors, no near-term timelines are suggested for nuclear and there is no firm allocation for so-called clean coal, which will depend on whether the concept can be demonstrated by 2030. For nuclear, there is a 5.2 GW allocation to be introduced in 1 250 MW yearly bursts between 2036 and 2039.

The more pressing issue, therefore, is what the plan says about gas, renewables and storage.

For renewables and storage, there are seemingly large allocations, but these are undersized – especially if one considers that it has already been proved that these can be developed, financed, and built, while delivering competitively priced electricity.

It is in the area of gas where the greatest attention is needed, particularly in light of a policy adjustment that set a 50% minimum load factor for the initial gas-to-power plants, which presumably applies to the 6 GW of gas that the plan assumes will be introduced by 2030.

Not only is this high, but it has also not been clearly stated for how long that load factor will be sustained, despite an assurance that there is “built-in flexibility” to adjust the load factor.

This policy adjustment could have significant implications for affordability, as the gas plants will be reliant (for the medium term at least) mostly on imported, dollar-denominated liquefied natural gas.

Given that affordability is the issue of the moment, there needs to be greater transparency about what this could mean for electricity prices.

Indeed, this is arguably the true shock of the IRP 2025: the lack of transparency on how the cost of the chosen scenario truly compares with the least-cost scenario.

While the costs of renewables and, more recently, battery storage are now fairly certain, and there is some sense about coal costs, the plan leans heavily on a technology where the cost visibility is poor and open to the vagaries of the exchange rate.

While few believe the IRP 2025 can be implemented, it is nevertheless hardly a signal that government is serious about arresting surging electricity tariffs.