Feroza Cassim | Managing Director | Wärtsilä South Africa | mail me |
Tord Johnsson | GM | Strategic Relations & Business | Wärtsilä South Africa | mail me |
South Africa’s energy landscape is currently challenged by load shedding and ageing coal-fired power stations. Looking through this crisis, we see some opportunities that the market can capitalise on.
In the broadest sense, the country now has a chance to leapfrog from the coal era into the new energy technologies of the 21st century.
Repurposing power
In the medium term, we see opportunity in repurposing old power stations, not necessarily to convert them to gas or other thermal power but to take a multi-technology approach.
The main objectives of Eskom’s RFI for decommissioned coal-fired power stations are to replace the energy, jobs, and economic activity. As an OEM and significant investor in Research and Development (R&D), we are interested in supporting Eskom through alternative green technologies, and education.
With a multi-layered approach, we believe we can replace or improve on the previous economic activity.
One of our proposals under this RFI is to operate a technology innovation centre at one of those plants. It would incorporate elements of existing technology as well as looking at future energy systems.
Advancing green technologies and skills development
In the long term, we see South Africa’s energy sector moving towards greener technologies, such as hydrogen or gas, exciting new fields for the country and one where we are a global front-runner. We have a focus on sustainability, and our vision is to promote 100% sustainable societies.
We have several installations on different vessels and have been involved for many years at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (NMMU), in their marine academy.
Over the years, we have invested more in our relationships with NMMU and Wits University and intend to deepen this relationship to include energy. We have followed a similar path in other countries, and we can contribute to that experience and knowledge, especially in modelling the energy transition.
There is a global energy talent programme, under which we recruit and train graduates from different countries. In 2021, we enrolled two new colleagues from South Africa into this programme.
To advance our transformation programme in South Africa, we have created a new black ownership trust that will support final-year black engineering students at NMMU and oversee our corporate social investments. One of our goals is to bring more women into the energy sector.
There is an increase in the South African supply chain investment and we have stepped up our efforts to source suppliers in South Africa and use local sub-contractors for civil, mechanical, and electrical engineering.
We are also working with our global suppliers to increase their local content sourcing in South Africa. All this must be accompanied by skills development.
In conclusion
In future years, we hope to secure several energy projects in SA under the IRP, which means we will need a skilled staff pipeline. Naturally, the number of jobs we can create depends on how successful we are in all our bids.
Additional jobs generated by bid projects would be either in construction or operation of power plants. We estimate we would create between 200 and 250 full-time jobs. Additional employment would be made within our sub-contractors and suppliers.
