Coal-miner Sasol fully intended to be a world leader in carbon capture and storage (CSS) technology, Sasol CEO Pat Davies said last week.

Davies said that Sasol, the world’s only commercial coal-to-liquids (CTL) company, saw CSS as one of the significant solutions to the challenge of reducing the carbon footprint.

The company had carbon reduction targets of 15% by 2020 at existing operations and 30% by 2030 at new CTL operations.

“We have all our engineers and scientists making sure that we do reach those targets,” Davies said.

Long-term, Sasol was mulling its role post internal combustion engine and was investing in solar, biomass and electron mobility to ensure that the company was sustainable into the future.

“Sasol is an innovative company with many scientists and engineers and I’m sure Sasol is going to become a world leader in reducing the carbon footprint of CTL plants,” Davies told Mining Weekly.

He said that, while there were no carbon-emission issues associated with gas-to-liquids technology, carbon emissions were an issue with CTL, alongside the rest of the coal-
using industry.

CTL’s carbon-emission issue was being tackled firstly through process 
improvement, but, in parallel with that, the company was working with several institutions around the world on CSS.

“We’re pretty reliant on CSS technology, which is a new technology, becoming successful, so that it can be used at scale to mitigate our carbon footprint.

“We’re also looking at a number of low-carbon forms of energy as well to ensure that our value proposition for growth in the future, which is dependent on CTL, is not blunted in any way,” he said.

Coal was a “very important” part of world energy and there would have to be a con-
tinued focus on coal, particularly in the 
developing world.

Coal continued to account for 95% of the input material fed into Saasol’s CTL plant at Secunda, in Mpumalanga, and natural gas for only 5%.

CTL was being used in China, where Sasol was far advanced with a feasibility study for an 80 000-bl/d plant.

If that was successful, China, with its huge coal reserves and a large market for transport fuels, presented tremendous upside potential for more CTL plants to be built into the future.

“Coal must play into that space, but it must be done in a responsible and sustainable way,” said Davies.

To watch a video in which Sasol CEO Pat Davies reports on Sasol moves to reduce its carbon footprint, click here.

To subscribe to Mining Weekly's print magazine email subscriptions@creamermedia.co.za or buy now.