The Komati Power Station, due to be decommissioned in the next two years. Photographer: Waldo Swiegers/Bloomberg A photograph in the entrance hall at Komati Power Station shows the plant in better times, its nine generating units belching steam and smoke into the night sky. Those days are never coming back: Komati’s sole remaining working unit is facing closure within two years under plans by state power utility Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd. to shut about a quarter of its coal-fired capacity by 2030. Next door at the Goedehoop mine, arrays of solar panels line the main access road, a sign of what may be to come for South Africa’s coal belt. The blackouts suffered by swathes of the U.S. this week show what’s at stake for even the world’s most advanced economies in getting the transition to cleaner energy right. In South Africa, for decades almost all the electricity needed […]