OVERVIEW
Energy Sasol’s partnerships are defining a new direction for the energy giant.
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series of international and domestic partnerships that Sasol has signed in recent months illustrate that the company has decided that the energy future must be markedly different to the present. A disruption of the company’s AGM by climate activists and doubts about the company’s carbon-reduction strategy expressed by some big investors have helped bring that awareness to broader public attention. International chemicals and energy company Sasol has several large plants in the Free State and Mpumalanga, pictured, and is the dominant national player in these sectors. Products manufactured by Sasol include synthetic fuel, petroleum, paraffin, jet fuel, creosote, bitumen, diesel and lubricants. The primary feedstock for synthetic-fuel production is coal. With more than 30 000 employees and a presence in 30 countries, the decisions Sasol makes have a big impact. Subsidiary company Sasol ecoFT is producing sustainable fuels and chemicals from green hydrogen and sustainable carbon sources via the Power-to-Liquids process and using the Fischer-Tropsch technology (FT) which has helped set the company apart in its field. In 2010 Sasol flew the world’s first passenger aircraft using fully
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SECTOR INSIGHT A market for carbon credits has been created.
synthetic jet fuel and it has been investigating solutions ever since. Sasol is part of a consortium based at its Secunda operations called HyShiFT with Linde, Enertrag and HydRegen, a spinoff company from the Department of Chemistry of the University of Oxford. The project aims to invest in about 500MW of renewable energy that will supply a 200MW electrolyser for green hydrogen production, resulting in PHOTO: Sasol
