GREEN POWER BLOOMS AMONG THE NAMAQUA DAISIES
Green hydrogen is often punted as the fuel of the future, and South Africa is uniquely positioned to produce a substantial amount of it. Can the country pull it off though?
Vanrhynsdorp, at the border of the Western and Northern Cape, is typical of many small South African dorpies. The obligatory Pep store. The steeple of the local Dutch Reformed Church. And, of course, deep economic and service delivery woes. But that may all change, if green hydrogen production takes off there.
A few kilometres outside town, Keren Energy is setting up South Africa’s first green hydrogen production plant. The company has already secured water and land rights for the planned 100MW plant, which will harness solar power to produce hydrogen from water through electrolysis.
Hydrogen has been dubbed the fuel of the future: it is mostly extracted from water and burns so cleanly it emits just water vapour. “Green hydrogen the cleanest option is created using renewable energy. The trouble is that, historically, the power-intensive process hasn’t been cheap. But as costs of renewables have fallen, green hydrogen has become an increasingly viable option.
The fuel could benefit not just heavy polluters such as the steel and chemical industries, which can’t decarbonise through solar and wind power alone, but South Africa as a whole. Global demand is poised to boom as the market shuns coal exports. As it stands, more than 80% of global coal exports are shipped to countries with net-zero emissions ambitions.
At climate talk-shop COP27 last year, South Africa unveiled a plan to produce more than 10Mt of green hydrogen a year by 2050, creating a local market worth $20bn (R360bn) and employing about 50,000 people.
As President Cyril Ramaphosa said at the inaugural Green Hydrogen Summit in Cape Town last year: “The potential for South Africa to emerge as a significant player in the green hydrogen value chain is immense.”
It’s an ambition that’s seen the country bet more than a fifth of its R1.5-trillion just energy transition investment plan on the emerging green hydrogen market.
The country is already responsible for 2% of global hydrogen production. But all of that is “grey hydrogen”, produced using coal. The goal is to double that to 4% by 2050 and go green.
South Africa has immense renewable energy potential and available land, and it’s the world’s largest platinum producer so the three key components for production are covered. In theory, then, it has what it takes to become a major exporter.
Germany is already showing interest and has put money on the table to fund the industry’s development in South Africa. And Japan, South Korea and the EU are likely to emerge as the primary export destinations for green hydrogen in the next 10 years, according to South Africa’s 2021 Hydrogen Society Roadmap (HSRM).
While other aspects of the just energy transition plan focus on addressing South Africa’s energy troubles, the green hydrogen element is all about capitalising on the global
shift towards renewables. As Ramaphosa put it: “South Africa has a unique opportunity to link its mineral endowment with its renewable energy potential to drive industrialisation.”
Consider platinum, for example. South Africa may be the world’s top producer of the metal — but it exports the raw material with little beneficiation. “Hydrogen technologies could allow the government to reverse the course by creating a more integrated domestic value chain,” writes Tani Salma, co-ordinator for the energy security & climate change programme at the Center for Strategic & International Studies.
The industry could repurpose existing fossil fuel infrastructure, “protecting jobs and infrastructure that are declining as a result of the drop in global demand for coal”, the HSRM notes.
Keren Energy and its partners have launched a successful proof-of-concept project in Vredendal, 25km west of Vanrhynsdorp. Namaqua Engineering supplied the site and the South African Institute for Advanced Materials Chemistry (SAIAMC) at the University of the Western Cape (UWC) provided the hydrogen extraction expertise.
“UWC has been doing electrolysis for over 20 years,” says Stanford Chidziva, acting director of the SAIAMC green hydrogen programme.
Still, there are plenty of obstacles to overcome.
Take Germany’s grab for green hydrogen. When the dust settles on the war in Ukraine, or US-China trade tensions ease, will Germany turn to those countries for hydrogen imports, leaving South Africa saddled with expensive infrastructure?
Activists Tobias Kalt and Makoma Lekalakala have also raised concerns on news site Daily Maverick around land disputes, harm to marine ecosystems and fishing communities, and deals shrouded in secrecy.
“There is a risk of green neocolonialism if South Africa takes on the role of the fuelling station for the Global North,” they write.
There’s also the issue of perception. Does it make sense, for a country in the grips of an electricity crisis, to invest this much in renewable energy for export?
Chidziva certainly believes so. “If you do the calculations, [capital expenditure] isn’t in electricity’s favour when it comes to powering industry,” he says. “Using electricity from renewable sources to make hydrogen leads to more revenue streams. Hydrogen is key in the chemical industry, agriculture [fertiliser], and in the space industry. In fact, there are three or four downstream uses for hydrogen vs the one or two for electricity.”
The trouble is getting there. To crack the green hydrogen dream, South Africa will need to set up 6GW-7GW of renewable capacity every year for the next two decades. Since 2011, it’s managed just 6GW, according to a report last year by the National Business Initiative (NBI), Business Unity South Africa and others. That’s a tall order — before even factoring in grid constraints.
Then there’s the unavoidable fact that the cost of creating green hydrogen is still high when compared with nonrenewable counterparts, academics Rod Crompton and Bruce Douglas Young, of the African Energy Leadership Centre at Wits Business School, write for The Conversation Africa. While a barrel of oil costs less than $100 at present, an equivalent amount of green hydrogen would cost $250-$400, they note, drawing on a 2020 report by the International Renewable Energy Agency (Irena).
There’s also significantly higher risk in transporting green hydrogen, which is colourless, odourless and tasteless, making leak detection and prevention of explosions difficult, according to Crompton and Young. And it needs to be kept at -253°C.
Finally, there’s the skills gap. “Historically, hydrogen has been controlled within factory perimeters and managed by trained people,” Crompton and Young write. “The widespread introduction of hydrogen into society will require new measures and skills.”
For all the potential headaches, South Africa still has options to explore. For example, there’s the possibility of “storing” hydrogen in ammonia for shipping, making it easier and cheaper to transport, according to Irena (though this will push up the cost).
Thanks to Sasol’s grey hydrogen production — in particular the patented Fischer-Tropsch process — South Africa also has something of a head start. “The technical expertise and skills that have been developed around the Sasol processes provide South Africa with a competitive edge in the production of liquid fuels based on the hydrogen-production route,” the HSRM report notes.
There’s a plan to tackle the skills gap too, says Chidziva. “We will need to import the skills to train our teachers and lecturers at first, and then develop the courses for our universities and [technical vocational education & training colleges].”
All told, South Africa could become one of the cheapest producers of green hydrogen globally, with a price of $1.60/kg by 2030, according to an estimate in the NBI report.
It means the green hydrogen dream continues to burn bright. For towns like Vanrhynsdorp, that’s a dream worth holding onto.
This article is part of a series by news site explain.co.za on the just energy transition. Reporting in this series was made possible by funding from the African Climate Foundation
The day after moving from your apartment of 18 years is perhaps not the ideal time to attend a furniture fair. I think the word is “triggering”. You can collect a lot of furniture and basic stuff in 18 years. And yet, here I was, last Saturday, wandering the streets and taking in the beautiful objects of the Cape Town Furniture Week.
Even more inopportune was the sales pitch at the first place I walked into, the hoop (that’s how they spell it) popup on the corner of Church and Loop streets, in the building (this is a bit of nostalgia for the older Capetonian) that housed the Floris Smit Huis restaurant in, I want to say, the 1980s? But perhaps someone with a better memory can correct me.
Hoop does amazing modular kitchens and flatpack furniture but unlike the Satan that is Ikea, it uses sustainably sourced timber. And the likeable gentleman telling me about the company happily said these are kitchens you can pack up and take with you when you move.
For a person who had just spent a week or so packing, this was not as big a selling point as he thought. But frivolous thoughts aside, what a wonderful idea. Your hoop kitchen can be made up of predefined modules of your choice, and you can get them in configurations that suit exactly what you want. Who wouldn’t want to take this with them when they move?
I’m no expert, despite having had a grandfather who was a renowned restorer of antiques, but ignoring the utilitarian in favour of what the furniture on display says about the world around it is instructive.
First, it’s a truly wondrous thing to see how much creativity, zest and intellectual bravery there is on display. If you want an antidote to the existential despair that bedevils the day-today experience of being a South African in an increasingly devolving cultural milieu (I’m assuming it’s not just me), take the time to experience how many amazing things young South Africans are producing.
The next exhibition I popped into, Box-Fresh, was even more encouraging. It was opposite my favourite bar, The House of Machines in Shortmarket Street. I don’t just mention this bar as a plug, but because it, too, is one of those weird South African success stories. The owners quietly opened a branch in New York last week, adding to a couple of others they have around the world.
On the wall of Box-Fresh was one of those handmade posters you see stapled to community notice boards or taped to lampposts; they’re often about a missing cat or a plea for work, with carefully cut strips featuring a phone number for people to tear off.
This one had a picture of a cabinet with the heading “Ex Hotel: Missing”, and the words “Have you seen this cabinet? Last seen at 76 Church St, Cape Town CBD on 20.01.23 at approx 3pm. If you have any information that may help locate this cabinet please contact the Ex Hotel front desk: frontdesk@exhotel.co.za.”
Under the poster were security camera stills showing two shadowy figures carrying a cabinet out through the front door and a bedside table on a yellow plinth, described as follows:
“Ex Hotel. Replica — the thief’s bedside table. An identical replica of the Thief’s Bedside Table that was stolen from Showcase 1 of Cape Town Furniture Focus on 20.01.2023. Reconstructed in exacting detail but using intentionally cheap materials to avoid a second theft, this replica cabinet is a response
to the recent loss of the beloved bedside cabinet that once inhabited the Ex Hotel.
“Remade from memory and a few surviving images, this cabinet is a homage to the ordinary and plain materials found at most hardware stores. It is an acknowledgment of what is possible using only what is at one’s disposal in a moment of urgency and need. This item is for display purposes only.”
It’s such a wonderful response to a theft, and you can guess where I’m going with this. If you’re a regular habitué of social media, you’ll have come across the South African humour trope. It’s one where people claim one of our survival traits is that we can always make a joke about adversity. Which is another way of saying we take the knocks and use them to fuel creativity.
Of course, this trait is partly just a coping mechanism. Most of the people experiencing hard knocks in South Africa are not privileged enough to crack a joke about them, I would think. But in some cases, and perhaps many cases, if we’re talking art and creativity, it does fuel new things.
The Ex Hotel’s “Replica — the thief’s bedside table” is a nice example of this. Someone steals your expensive piece of furniture? Recreate it as disposable, but as part of an artwork that cocks a snook. It’s like a Duchamp, but for criminals. Not made from found materials, but from lost ideas.
Well, that’s if the story on the poster is true. I’ve been fooled before. Famously, I once reviewed a performance piece that was publicised as artist Kendell Geers sitting on the steps of the Old Town House on Greenmarket Square in Cape Town while wearing a Nelson Mandela mask. It turned out to be another artist, Peet Pienaar, pretending to be Geers.
When I tried to google to see if a cabinet had in fact been stolen, the first result was a 2018 TimesLIVE story headed, “Guest explains why he put up a ‘Do not stay here’ banner outside a Cape hotel”. It was about a guy who put up a banner outside the Taj Cape Town, reading “Do not stay at Taj Hotel Cape Town. Bad guest service. Valuables go missing. Incompetent management. No communication. Will not resolve problems.”
When the hotel removed the banner, he opened a case of theft and it was returned to him. There’s absurd performance art everywhere you look.
Ex Hotel’s Instagram account seemed to clarify, though. “We have had several people contact Ex Hotel and ask if this is ‘real’ or not. We want to be clear here that this cabinet was really taken from the exhibition it was part of and it is of huge importance to us that it is safely returned.”
Given the wholesale plundering going on in our country, why am I writing about what constitutes a minor theft in comparison? Because it seems the same sense of humour and creativity shown by Ex Hotel might be one small way to push back and conjure something valuable out of the general malaise. I know, I know, it’s fanciful, perhaps even idealistic. But it beats just slumping in despair.