Deputy Speaker, thank you, hon Dexter, for your question. The one important thing that we have realised in the process of developing the Integrated Resource Plan, IRP 1 and IRP 2, is that power generation as well as power supply doesn't seem to see colour. The brownouts, blackouts and white elephants you are talking about I don't know about.
What we are doing with the IRP 2010 is to make sure that we will be able to allow for maximum input from the various stakeholders. As we speak, we have been requested by business as well as labour and the other stakeholders within the National Economic Development and Labour Council, Nedlac, to extend the period for public comments so as to allow for maximum participation on this particular plan. For once we want to make sure that South Africans have a comprehensive consolidated energy plan that can help those who want to invest - irrespective of the party they belong to - in the 30% power generation going forward, and that would be able to project their inputs. But, the most important thing is for us to be able to afford South Africans an opportunity to benefit from the new growth path in terms of making sure that the number of jobs that we said we were going to create, in terms of the stipulations of the new growth path, can be realised.
One of the key pillars of the IRP would be to ensure that all the energy carriers or technologies that would be utilised in the next 20 years emphasise localisation. That is why, with the support of the Deputy President, we could agree to the extension of the period for public comments so that even business as well as labour could help us to do the proper calculations in terms of which energy carrier would afford us decent and sustainable jobs, which energy carrier would make it possible for us to emphasise and realise localisation. I just want to assure you that this is one plan that, including our National Stakeholder Advisory Council on Electricity, role-players indicated that we wanted to make sure that we can all agree as South Africa that this is a plan that would help us to generate jobs.
This is a first attempt, and we want to make sure, like I said, that there is diversification, and we have also insisted that in the plan we need to create space for all the energy carriers. South Africans are also very much alive to the fact that we are being called on to reduce the percentage of coal in our IRP. We are saying that we are conscious of the fact that we need to protect the environment for the next generations. We are not going to be careless and avoid utilising the only reliable source of energy, coal, or alternatively another big base load being uranium. We are going to make it possible that we invest in the different scientific interventions to make sure that the particular energy carrier becomes clean.
That is why we say that we are not going to stop using coal, we are not going to say no to nuclear energy and we say, as government, that we need a plan that is going to be technology neutral. We are looking at making sure that early in January when we table the IRP 20 we sure that the different role-players have already made their maximum inputs.
I'm happy that even today the Minister of Science and Technology can indicate that there is a big conference of the scientific academic role- players where some of them are speaking about the importance of changing the picture of the world at night, when it is still only the continent of Africa that is dark.
We are looking at the different atlases. In terms of wind we've got the solar radiation indicators. We also have what is called the Carbon Capture and Storage, CCS, atlas so that whatever project we are looking at should be designed in such a way that it can capture, transport and store carbon going forward. As government we are saying that we want to make sure that we have a consolidated and comprehensive energy plan for South Africa. Thank you.