Grobler swears that Sasol is done building big new projects that rely on coal, oil, or natural gas. The green dreams must find fruition if Sasol is to grow. Already in their German operations Sasol makes bio-ethylene out of plant-based biomass and waste. In September Sasol announced a partnership with Japan’s Itochu Corp to scale up the manufacture of green hydrogen into more easily transported green ammonia. At Lake Charles, where Sasol still has land to spare, they are considering the construction of a plant with South Korea’s Lotte Chemical that would make electrolyte solvents for lithium ion batteries. Grobler sees plenty of opportunities emerging in the extraction of copper, platinum and diamonds. That will mean finding new jobs for potentially thousands of miners. Sasol aims to reduce its coal use by 25%, or 9 million tons a year. “Whether it happens in 2030 or 2040-with so much money invested, it’s going to happen.” Once they can make enough green hydrogen, they’ll combine it with a source of sustainable carbon (i.e., from landfill gas, or sucked out of the air) to make sustainable jet fuel. thanks to the many flavors of federal green energy tax credits included in the recent Inflation Reduction Act. That will come down, especially in the U.S. Sasol in 2023 will make its first batch of “green” hydrogen-using excess wind or solar power to run the electrolysis-but the initial cost will be on the order of $3 a pound. Sasol makes “gray” hydrogen in its plants by gasifying coal. There’s a lot of hype about the future hydrogen economy, and why not? When you burn it, all you get is water vapor. “We don’t need to put new steel in the ground to produce. If Sasol can find “green” sources for those feedstocks, then maybe it can succeed in its goal of reducing emissions 30% by 2030. Cheap and plentiful shale gas continues to be Sasol’s rationale for making chemicals at Lake Charles. Traditionally it has relied on fossil fuels to make them. The Fischer-Tropsch process needs two primary feedstocks: carbon monoxide and hydrogen. Sasol now makes nearly 150,000 barrels per day of synthetic diesel and jet fuels worldwide. Later, perfection of the process helped South Africa fuel its economy during the apartheid years.
The process that was developed by German scientists in the 1920s later helped fuel Hitler's war effort. It uses a highly carbon-intensive process called Fischer-Tropsch to convert coal or natural gas into refined fuels that would otherwise more commonly be made from petroleum. Sasol is, however, a tough company to decarbonize. Indeed, last year South Africa put in place its first carbon tax. In front of mind these days is the inevitability of the green energy transition.
But it’s not just about the “quantum of money,” as Grobler calls it.
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