NEWSMAKER | 'Hydrogen could fuel the future for SA'

Veteran entrepreneur Mashudu Ramano, who committed R4.3bn for a hydrogen fuel cell project at last week’s investment conference, says the government has been much too slow to appreciate what a game changer green hydrogen could be for the country.

“Hydrogen is probably the most suitable strategy for SA because with hydrogen energy we become energy independent. We’ve got all the things required to produce enough hydrogen energy to make us energy secure. And the beauty of fuel cells is that they don’t require grid capacity to provide energy.”

The former chair of Johnnic Communications and Airports Company SA, Ramano became one of the country’s earliest champions of hydrogen after a study of global trends.

In 2012, he started Mitochondria Energy,  which formed a partnership with Austrian engineering company AVL to develop hydrogen fuel cell technology.

His plan to have a factory in Mpumalanga producing fuel cells for a burgeoning global market by 2023 came unstuck when the Mpumalanga Economic Growth Agency tied it up in red tape.

“We were coming with our own self-funded project which would create local jobs and economic growth in what is a very depressed area and they wanted to run a tender process. How do you run a tender process when I’m coming to build a factory?”

He says this is typical of the bureaucratic mindset that has prevented President Cyril Ramaphosa’s much-vaunted infrastructure development programme from taking off and attracting potential investors.

“Gauteng province said they were setting up the Vaal Special Economic Zone (SEZ) and asked if we would be interested in relocating our project to Gauteng.”

In December 2021, 700ha was allocated in the Vaal SEZ in the industrial heartland of Vereeniging and Vanderbijlpark, and Mitochondria began the compliance processes.

It will spend R1.3bn of the R4.3bn in 2023/2024 on the assembly line and testing facilities, with the rest over the next two years. The goal is to start building the factory in June or July this year and have it producing by January 2025.

The first 50kW commercial hydrogen fuel cell, produced by Mitochondria engineers working with their counterparts at the AVL premises in Graz, Austria, will be on the market by December 2024, he says.

Suppliers will be from Europe and South Africa, where Mitochandria has been working on supplier and skills development. The core manufacturing assembly skills needed are available in the South African automobile industry.

The plant will produce hydrogen components for the local and export markets including fuel cells, electrolysers and inverters.

The construction of the factory will take a year and create 1,500 construction jobs in the Sebokeng/Emfuleni area.

His team has had four sessions with community representatives to forestall disruptions by the construction mafia.

“They have said they will defend this project against the [construction] mafia whatever happens. South Africa cannot be held to ransom by these mafias. They must be stopped. We are working with all relevant provincial and national government entities to make sure this project is implemented.”

Ramano says with a different attitude South Africa could have moved much further in the development of hydrogen energy than it has.

“I started on the path of hydrogen fuel cells 15 years ago. The Hydrogen South Africa project of the government was implemented in 2006/2007 but they only developed a hydrogen strategy in 2020, almost 14 years later. So you can see, we were slow.”

He sees a big opportunity in Eskom’s plan to repurpose 11 coal-fired power stations, creating a 20,000MW energy gap, and in the steel, aviation and mining industries needing to meet decarbonisation targets.

He says electricity minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa’s proposal to delay the move to decarbonisation in South Africa confirms his view that “most of our government is not proactive in managing the energy transition”.

“There are a lot of vested interests in maintaining the status quo.”

“Too many politicians don't have the interests of the country at heart but pursue their own personal, vested interests. And this kind of narrow-minded thinking is destroying South Africa.”