Every Friday, SAfm’s radio anchor Sakina Kamwendo speaks to Martin Creamer, publishing editor of Engineering News & Mining Weekly. Reported here is this Friday’s At the Coalface transcript:

Kamwendo: South Africa this week spelt out its green hydrogen development plans to a United Nations organisation.

Creamer: This was fantastic, because we have got a crisis in the Middle East and it is around energy. The United Nations organisation that deals with industrial development called for an immediate response and there were 70 countries. The one that performed the best, by far, I can tell you, was South Africa. I think Rebecca Maserumule really knows her story. The way she was spelling out that in 2009 we sat here without any renewable energy and she said, look at the renewable energy we have got now. She says, that is why, without a doubt, we can do the green hydrogen. I thought it was really good, because we know that during the last crisis, we saw Europe, or France particularly, go to nuclear energy.

I think now is the time to switch to this clean energy, which we should have done long time ago, green energy. What Rebecca was spelling out was how she deals with first movers and she gets them to answer a whole lot of questions so that they start understanding what the implications are. Another point, she said, next week, she will be in Rotterdam with the Minister of Electricity and Energy to discuss this, and she thanked the Germans, she thanked the Hollanders she thanked everybody for the funding that South Africa has got. She says some of it is, of course, with green hydrogen, but she knows that she would like to get the operational part of it cheaper, as well as doing the whole thing cheaper. She is sure, if we work together, we can do this. But one thing that was so clear the people in the north said, we can't do this. We know the people in the south can supply us with this and be ready to do a partnership.

Kamwendo: South Africa this week began generating more sun and wind energy for its platinum, iron-ore and diamond mines.

Creamer: This is incredible. The mines are switching on renewable power like you can't believe, every month, if not every week, in fact. So we had, this tie up between Anglo American and EDF. They have got a joint venture called Envusa. Envusa reported again this week that they had come through with another 140 megawatts this time of wind energy. This is for the platinum group metal mine Valterra and also for the iron-ore mine Kumba, and also for the diamond mine of  De Beers, Venetia. But that came shortly after 240 megawatts of solar power from Mooiplaats.

This is what you seeing all the time. It is wind and sun coming through and that is what the Europeans were saying. We have got this wind, we have got the sun, we have got the water, we have got the land, we have got everything you need to really go one step further with the green hydrogen. Then, we also saw Richards Bay Minerals coming through with 148 megawatts of solar. So, this solar comes from Limpopo to KwaZulu Natal and they are targeting a lot more as well. Both of them are targeting like over the 500 megawatt mark, and they are getting there fast. They do back-to-back movements that just seem to move very, very fast, within the renewable energy field.

Kamwendo: Laxity has resulted in South Africa falling far behind on the green hydrogen front.

Creamer: Yes, you know, I can recollect. It was 2011, I was in Durban. Up popped Anglo American CEO of the time, Cynthia Caroll. She said, the window is wide open for hydrogen. We can create hundreds and thousands of jobs. Do you understand? And there present at the time, was our then Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe, I can remember he was involved. There was a company also from Canada called Ballard. We saw what Ballard was doing and we thought this is an ideal opportunity to now work with them. The leadership in South Africa changed.

You had Kgalema Motlanthe, he became a president for a while, but then Jacob Zuma took over and instead of our departments sort of continuing with this motion that had been set in play, it just seemed to fall away. Ministries changed and all sorts of things like that, but if you look at Ballard, that company from Canada that was with us, there, if we had just kept pace with them, with some South African link, they are so far ahead. I mean, they have got green hydrogen on buses, trucks, ships, planes, everything, just you think of it. This is what hydrogen can do. It can have green cement, green steel, green everything. It can also give you the mobility and it can give you the data centre, it can give you everything. So, people are starting to realise that and Cynthia Carroll told us in 2011, go for this, and she had a whole lot of research, but because of change of leadership and laxity, we lost out.

Kamwendo: Thanks very much. Martin Creamer is publishing, editor of Engineering News & Mining Weekly.