Opposition to the South African government’s awarding of preferred-bidder status to power ships as part of a recent electricity procurement bidding round continues to grow. Besides ongoing questions over whether it is technically, economically and environmentally sensible to be entering into 20-year power purchase agreements for a solution that is designed principally as a short-term remedy for a power emergency, there are now also corruption allegations. Whether these factors, combined, will be sufficient to sink the programme is far from certain, however.