ANGLO American Platinum (Amplats) chief executive Natascha Viljoen said yesterday that the cost of renewables comes at 50 percent less of what the company was currently paying for energy.
Energy makes up between 20 and 25 percent of the cost in the Amplats business.
“You can start to see it has a significant impact. I think the other benefit for us is a reliable energy supply. As a business both from a safety point-of-view and a cost and efficiency point-of-view, we see a significant impact, and significant potential with that green energy supply,“ she said.
Viljoen was part of a panel of the Business Day Dialogues webinar yesterday. Jonathan Debasc, the managing director of Engie thermal supply and hydrogen Africa, and Amplats market development principal, Fahmida Smith, were also guests.
Debasc said the mining sector was at the centre of the energy transition.
“If you want to generate green power you need a lot of minerals, but if you generate this green power with carbonated intensive minerals then eventually it doesn’t make sense,” he said.
Debasc warned that if mining companies did not change their business model and embrace renewables their companies might close.
He said there was a lot of generational hydrogen in South Africa, but the country still dealt with coal. But there was a lack of understanding of hydrogen.
“South Africa is in a great space for the hydrogen economy. The wind and the sun are part of the best in the world. It’s equivalent to those of Chile, Saudi Arabia and Australia. Considering that 50 percent of the cost of hydrogen arose from the energy used to produce it placed South Africa in a very competitive position,” he said.
South Africa had a lot of space for wind panels. If you took only 1 percent of South Africa’s land, you could generate 10 million tonnes a year of hydrogen, which was also a competitive advantage, Debasc said.
“With those pillars, South Africa could eventually be transformed into an exporter of green hydrogen to those countries unable to generate their own green hydrogen. It’s a big opportunity,” he said.
Viljoen said Amplats was targeting minerals and metals that would help the company along the way to decarbonise.
“We have spoken about our targets to be carbon-neutral by 2040 and also targeting our energy intensity, not only by reducing our carbon footprint but also leveraging the qualities of our products,” she said.
Debasc said there was a clear consensus that something needed to be done to respect the 1.5 degrees Celsius global warming trajectory.
“We are living in interesting times where we are going out of this global warming debate. Governments today are all aiming towards not only reducing their carbon footprint but completely going to net zero,” he said.
Smith said the green Hydrogen Valley project that is being developed in Limpopo, Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal had the potential to provide $4 billion (R61bn) to the gross domestic product of the South African economy; $900 million to the fiscus in tax revenue; and 14 000 jobs a year by 2050.
BUSINESS REPORT