Driving the Hydrogen Economy in South Africa

At Anglo American, we’re transforming our business to deliver on our purpose of reimagining mining to improve people’s lives. Underpinning this is our Sustainable Mining Plan, which guides how we mine and process our products to shape a more sustainable business across our entire value chain.

Our Sustainable Mining Plan is built around three key pillars, aligned to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. One of these, alongside how we view our role as a trusted corporate leader and the support we provide to thriving communities, is our commitment to maintaining a healthy environment, and our corporate response to climate change, one of the defining challenges of our time.

To address this, we’re taking action to make a meaningful contribution to the decarbonisation of our industry, and working to achieve a greener, cleaner, and more sustainable world. Developing the hydrogen economy, a sector with the potential to play a significant role in the sustainable energy transition, is firmly at the heart of our framework.

Courtesy of its world-leading solar and wind resources, and access to the platinum group metals (PGM) used in polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) electrolysers needed to produce green hydrogen as a fuel, and in fuel cells to generate electricity from hydrogen, South Africa is among the countries primed to capitalise; both in terms of hydrogen generation and consumption.

As a leading producer of PGM, and a business operating in South Africa for more than a hundred years, we have been working towards establishing the right ecosystem to successfully develop, scale-up and deploy hydrogen-fuelled solutions. As part of this, we are exploring the potential for a hydrogen valley in South Africa, intended to cluster several industrial and research initiatives, and to carry out a series of pilot projects across the complete hydrogen value chain.

Feasibility study has identified three key hydrogen valley hubs

In collaboration with South Africa’s Department of Science and Innovation (DSI), the South African National Development Institute (SANEDI), ENGIE, and Bambili Energy, we completed a hydrogen valley feasibility study in October 2021.

The study identified three hubs – Johannesburg, extending to Rustenburg and Pretoria; Durban, encompassing the city itself and Richards Bay; and Limpopo province, centred around our Mogalakwena PGM mine. These hubs will have a fundamental role to play in integrating hydrogen into the country’s economy, and in establishing South Africa and its abundant renewable energy resources as a strategically important centre for green hydrogen production.

Hydrogen valley presents substantial economic and employment potential

The results of the independently conducted feasibility study show that the hydrogen valley could add between $4-9 billion to South African GDP (direct and indirect contributions) by 2050, while also creating between 14,000 - 30,000 direct and indirect jobs per year. These jobs will span the entire hydrogen value chain, from research and development, engineering and maintenance, to training and outreach – across sourcing, production, transportation and storage.

Nine individual pilot projects have also been identified across these hubs, recommended to be prioritised by developers, and spanning the trans- port, industrial, and construction sectors. Since the publication of the feasibility study results, we have worked with South Africa’s DSI and other partners on the implementation of relevant projects, including the Rhynbow Project. This initiative, which we are progressing together with partners Bambili Energy, ENGIE, Sasol and TotalEnergies, will look to aggregate demand for fuel cell heavy duty vehicles, including buses and articulated trucks, to scale a viable operational ecosystem.

We also continue to advance independent efforts to introduce hydrogen powered solutions to our mines; part of our aim to achieve carbon neutrality across our operations by 2040. The investment in renewable hydrogen production technology and the development and introduction of hydrogen-powered fuel cell mine haul trucks at our Mogalakwena PGM mine, is a prime example of this approach.

nuGen™ – Anglo American’s Zero Emissions Haulage Solution

nuGen™ represents a different way of thinking about mining; one that, aligned with our FutureSmart Mining™ programme, brings together technology, digitalisation and sustainability, with step-change innovation intended to transform the very nature of mining.

This broader objective is behind the nuGen™ Zero Emission Haulage Solution (ZEHS) project, an end-to-end integrated green hydrogen production, fuelling, and haulage system for mine sites.

We’re taking action to make a meaningful contribution to the decarbonisation of our industry, and working to achieve a greener, cleaner, and more sustainable world.

The world’s lightest 510t truck

The pilot for nuGen™ is a hydrogen-powered ultra- class mine haul truck. It’s an ambitious project that marks the first time a truck of this size and load capacity (a 220t truck with a load capacity of 290t = a total laden weight of 510t) has been converted to run on hydrogen that will be produced on-site in hybrid combination with a battery.

Retrofitted from a diesel-powered vehicle, the nuGen™ truck uses a hybrid hydrogen fuel cell to provide roughly half of the power and a battery pack the other half, enabling energy recovery from braking. Hydrogen enters the fuel cell from the tank and mixes with oxygen to create water in a chemical reaction catalysed by platinum. This generates electricity which is then used to power the motors that drive the wheels. The only emission from the vehicle is water vapour.