The Durban metro's landmark 400MW power deal is not a renewable energy success. It's a carefully orchestrated national strategy to avert an industrial catastrophe that could wipe out 5% of GDP.

city and Energy Kgosientsho Ramokgopa needed only four succinct bullet points in the Government Gazette to herald a landmark 400MW energy deal: eThekwini will be South Africa's first metro to procure substantial power from independent producers and could potentially reduce its reliance on Eskom by 18%.

But the devil is in the detail, which reveals that this isn't quite the green energy story many may have been expecting. Of the 400MW capacity, only 100MW will come from solar photovoltaic (PV) panels. The remaining 300MW will be generated by natural gas. This makes eThekwini's deal less a renewable energy triumph than a strategic manoeuvre to avert the other national energy crisis: the "gas cliff".

South Africa faces the imminent collapse of its natural gas supply. This could devastate industries worth up to R700-billion annually and directly threaten more than 70,000 jobs. The country's industrial economy depends heavily on gas imports from Mozambique via the Rompco pipeline. But those Pande and Temane fields are rapidly depleting and Sasol, the...