https://www.miningweekly.com

SA well placed to be taking advantage of hydrogen economy – Creecy

1st October 2019

By: Martin Creamer

Creamer Media Editor

     

Font size: - +

RANDJESFONTEIN (miningweekly.com) – South Africa is well placed to be taking advantage of the climate-positive hydrogen fuel economy, Environment, Forestry and Fisheries Minister Barbara Creecy said on Tuesday.

“We’re richly endowed with platinum, so I think that it’s very important that we need to be thinking laterally.

“It’s absolutely not possible to be moving away from coal overnight, either as a source of foreign export earnings or as a source of power generation.

“But we are looking forward in the Integrated Resource Plan to see a bigger component of renewables, while still accepting that coal and nuclear will provide a substantive section of our energy security,” Creecy told Mining Weekly on the sidelines of the tenth Oppenheimer Research Conference, at which former mining luminary Nicky Oppenheimer described the mineral endowment on which South Africa had been built as a "wasting resource", and the environment on which major job-creating tourism could be built as a resource with an infinite horizon.

“So, while we definitely, in the medium term, I think, are going to be facing challenges in relation to coal…we must also start to understand some of the new opportunities,” said Creecy.

In implementing a just transition from a high-carbon economy to a low-carbon economy, decisions needed to be made, she said, on alternative employment for workers at coal-fired power stations that may be due for retirement.

“We understand that in a place like Mpumalanga huge numbers of people are dependent on the upstream and downstream industries associated with coal production and coal-fired electricity generation.

“Clearly, there would be opportunities in Medupi and Kusile for those skilled workers and one of my understandings is that many of them might be moved from some of the older power stations to the new power stations as they come on line. But I think we’ve also got to be looking at what alternative sectors of the economy can we be developing.

“There has been quite a lot of work already done through the National Development Plan on the issue of the just transition…what we’re trying to understand is how we protect workers and communities. The traditional International Labour Organisation understanding of the just transition is that you look at the workers, but what we have to understand is the question of service providers that would be dependent on those enterprises. So, that is something that is moving to top of the agenda as a very important question that we need to be looking at and you can’t have any shift without answering the just transition question,” Creecy added.

Edited by Creamer Media Reporter

Comments

The content you are trying to access is only available to subscribers.

If you are already a subscriber, you can Login Here.

If you are not a subscriber, you can subscribe now, by selecting one of the below options.

For more information or assistance, please contact us at subscriptions@creamermedia.co.za.

Option 1 (equivalent of R125 a month):

Receive a weekly copy of Creamer Media's Engineering News & Mining Weekly magazine
(print copy for those in South Africa and e-magazine for those outside of South Africa)
Receive daily email newsletters
Access to full search results
Access archive of magazine back copies
Access to Projects in Progress
Access to ONE Research Report of your choice in PDF format

Option 2 (equivalent of R375 a month):

All benefits from Option 1
PLUS
Access to Creamer Media's Research Channel Africa for ALL Research Reports, in PDF format, on various industrial and mining sectors including Electricity; Water; Energy Transition; Hydrogen; Roads, Rail and Ports; Coal; Gold; Platinum; Battery Metals; etc.

Already a subscriber?

Forgotten your password?

MAGAZINE & ONLINE

SUBSCRIBE

RESEARCH CHANNEL AFRICA

SUBSCRIBE

CORPORATE PACKAGES

CLICK FOR A QUOTATION