South Africa is in an amazingly good position to create huge wealth and generate hundreds of thousands of near-term jobs by producing carbon-neutral powerfuels for aviation, and green hydrogen for the production of green steel.
The starting point is to use our superior sunlight, prime wind, available land and platinum group metals to create massive green renewable energy, and then to use that green energy to create carbon-neutral powerfuels at the ailing PetroSA, and then green hydrogen by putting the green electricity through sea water and using that to produce green steel for export out of the mothballed Saldanha Steel.
Both PetroSA and Saldanha Steel are ready-built and usefully at the coast, and South Africans also have the very good fortune of being able to access platinum group metals at mine gate prices and use these metals to turn wonderfully catalysed sea water into green hydrogen. The revenue that this has the potential to generate is in the trillions-of-rands category. What are we waiting for?