Fuel to wean SA from its dirty coal habit

GAS is an integral part of the government's plans to wean SA from its near-total dependency on coal, and SA's substantial shale gas resources - up to 485-trillion cubic feet - have caught the attention of petrochemical multinationals, much to the horror of environmentalists, farmers and other land owners.

The integrated resource plan for electricity, which guides the expansion of SA's electricity supply over a 20-year period, has proposed that gas contribute up to 6% of all new electricity generation. It provides for a minimum of 711MW from gas turbines, possibly using liquefied natural gas, between 2019 and 2021.

Gas is certainly cleaner than coal, and even environmentalists believe it is an important & transitional& energy source as SA moves away from its greenhouse gas-heavy economy towards one that meets its undertaking at the 2009 United Nations climate-change talks to cut greenhouse gas emissions 34% by 2020, and 42% by 2025.

Fossil-fuelled power stations are major emitters of greenhouse gases, which science has linked to global warming, emitting up to three times as much carbon dioxide - the most abundant greenhouse gas - as natural gas, depending on the quality of the coal.

& Conventional gas is important as a transitional energy carrier on the way to SA using completely renewable energy sources,& World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) climate-change programme manager Richard Worthington says.

& It's a handy alternative to nuclear, which is costly ... and has other issues, including proliferation dangers. It's a good complement to renewables,& says Anton Eberhard, National Planning Commission member and lecturer at the University of Cape Town's business school.

Protecting the environment is & not even the main reason& for SA to turn to natural gas, says Trade and Industrial Policy Strategies sustainable programme manager Peet du Plooy. He argues gas is far more efficient and a switch would work as a hedge against oil price fluctuations. SA also faces electricity shortages until its new coal- and nuclear-based power stations come online and converting to gas-based power is relatively quick and easy, he says.

Mr du Plooy, however, estimates gas prices will suffer the same volatility as oil prices within 30 years, so its usefulness as a fuel is time-limited.

The WWF says generating 50% of SA's electricity from renewable resources by 2030 is feasible and has produced a document that argues the country is at a & crossroads& in energy development and intensive renewable energy technologies have great job creation potential.

Even Sasol Petroleum International CEO Ebbie Haan agrees that investing in gas-related infrastructure & would probably slow down& research and development into renewable energy sources. & This country will come to a grinding halt if we do not create alternatives. There needs to be a broad spectrum approach,& he says.

The start of SA's renewable energy procurement programme has attracted the interest of big renewable energy companies and equipment suppliers such as Siemens. Under the programme, SA will procure 3725MW of renewable energy capacity by 2016. The power, from onshore wind, concentrated solar thermal, solar photovoltaic, biogas, landfill gas and small hydro technologies, is valued at R120bn.

The National Energy Regulator of SA's petrol and pipeline head Rod Crompton says there are already lots of small biogas projects making electricity from landfill gas and some taxis are using gas-powered engines, but Mr du Plooy warns there is & some evidence& that the use of crops such as maize, a staple food in southern Africa, as biomass for making biogas was pushing up commodity prices.

Gas made headlines earlier this year over the award of exploration rights to Royal Dutch Shell, a Sasol joint venture with Norway's Statoil and Chesapeake Energy Corporation of the US, US shale gas explorer Falcon Oil and Gas and locally-registered Bundu Gas and Oil Exploration to allow the groups to conduct desktop studies on SA's shale gas resources.

Petroleum Agency of SA frontier technology manager Jennifer Marot says while this covers about 250000km² of SA (total land area of 1219000km²) it is believed that there could be between 30-trillion cubic feet and 485-trillion cubic feet of economically viable shale gas. There are also small pockets of coal-bed methane and biogenic gas resources.

Public outrage at the possibility of tapping SA's shale gas resources, even to determine its economic feasibility, is because doing so would involve using the controversial hydraulic fracturing method (fracking) recently banned by France.

Mineral Resources Minister Susan Shabangu has placed a moratorium on the processing of applications for reconnaissance, technical co-operation, exploration and production rights, from February 1, and a hold on existing applications until a technical committee has a closer look at fracking.

There have been recommendations, including from the Democratic Alliance, that the government wait for the publication of a US Environmental Protection Agency peer-review report on the effects of fracking.

SA has the advantage of coming into the world fracking debate just as interest in shale gas increases, but on the back of 20-odd years of trial and error in the US, where public concern over fracking's possible negative health and environmental effects is rising.

& It's hugely complementary ... in the Karoo they could generate solar energy in the day and shale gas (generation) at night to ensure a 24-hour solution. But, in terms of shale gas, I am absolutely for exploitation provided it is environmentally safe. There is no need to hurry. We can wait to find a proven safe technology for extracting shale gas,& says Cornelis van der Waal, energy business unit leader for consulting group Frost & Sullivan.

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