Author Archive for: Engineering News

Amid local energy constraints and a global focus on increasing renewable energy capacity, the importance of ensuring that proper planning is implemented as South Africa transitions to cleaner energy was highlighted during a roundtable discussion at this year’s South African (SA) Auto Week, hosted by naamsa | The Automotive Business Council, in Johannesburg, from October 11 to 13. During the discussion, a need to diversify the energy mix and ensure a stable baseload energy supply was discussed, with South African Nuclear Energy Corporation CEO Loyiso Tyabashe arguing that nuclear energy can contribute towards a diversified energy mix.

The South African Revenue Service led a large-scale government search and seizure operation against several alleged members of coal smuggling syndicates across the country on Thursday, including former Eskom employees. “The alleged coal-smugglers and their related entities are active and have a presence in Gauteng, Mpumalanga, KwaZulu-Natal, the Free State and Limpopo,” the tax authority said in a statement. “The suspects targeted today include former Eskom employees who facilitated procurement fraud, as well as other individuals involved in the diversion of high-grade coal.” Sars said it established that the suspects had contravened several tax laws, including non-registration for income tax, failure to submit tax returns, under-declaration of income, claiming undue VAT refunds, and making false submissions. Sars put the loss of revenue to the fiscus by the syndicates at over R500-million. Coal smuggling syndicates have been a consistent problem for Eskom. Often, trucks transporting coal to power stations are diverted to specific coal yards, and high-quality coal is swapped out for low-grade product, scrap or rocks. When the lower-grade products are used at the station, they cause infrastructure damage, rendering them unable to generate electricity, leading to more loadshedding. Sars Commissioner Edward Kieswetter said the raids were a massive breakthrough in ongoing investigations into the syndicates.

Steel producer ArcelorMittal South Africa (AMSA) is moving ahead with a study into the production of green hydrogen directly reduced iron (gHDRI) at its mothballed Saldanha Steel Works, in the Western Cape. Market and product development head Jerry Dungu told participants at an industry conference that the JSE-listed group had signed a memorandum of understanding with a “developer of transformational energy solutions” to advance the production of gHDRI at the plant.

Harnessing the potential for renewable energy and green hydrogen production, or replacing carbon atoms with hydrogen atoms in the energy value chain, can build peace and stability in Africa, petroleum company Conex Liberia MD Amitahb Prasad has said. “By 2035, Africa can produce 50-million tons of competitively priced green hydrogen. The expected global demand for green hydrogen is 607-million tons by 2050. In comparison, Africa’s demand for green hydrogen and its derivatives is expected to reach 10-million to 18-million tons a year by 2050, but with a production potential much above that.

Only 28 municipalities have to date been given approval by the National Treasury to participate in the Eskom Municipal Debt Relief Support Programme, which was announced in the February Budget as part of a R254-billion debt-relief package that has been extended to the utility. The programme is designed to enable Eskom to write off municipal arrears debt, which stood at R58.5-billion at the end of March with 136 of the country’s 257 municipalities in arrears. In September, Eskom indicated that its outstanding municipal debt had increased to above R65-billion.