Thank you, Deputy Speaker. Minister, it is clear why government is not prepared to increase the paltry renewable energy target of 10 000 gigawatt hours by 2013. It is because you have not even reached 5% of this target, and it is clear that with the current plans, we won't even get to half of it.
This is in contrast to many other countries that are steaming ahead on the renewable energy front, as they have indentified it as a major growth industry. China, for instance, has already exceeded its 2020 target for wind energy and has created thousands of jobs and new industries in the process.
I often hear rhetoric from government around the need for clean energy, but unfortunately the facts speak for themselves. The feed-in tariffs don't work, because no cost-recovery mechanism has been put in place to force Eskom to sign power-purchase agreements with renewable energy producers. The latest National Integrated Resource Plan allegedly also has targets for renewable energy which will only see us achieving half of our renewable energy target by 2013. In addition, the new build programme of Eskom has also made provision for only 1% of it being from renewable energy.
Minister, renewable energy can be more rapidly deployed than either coal or nuclear energy. Will you therefore direct some of the billions of rand across to renewable energy? [Time expired.]