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MechChem Africa
•
March 2017
I
n her capacity as executive director of
the Southern African Association for
Energy Efficiency (SAEE), Valerie Geen
was chosen as Programme director and
MC for the day. Geen is a former head of en-
ergy at the NBI (National Business Initiative)
and is now a projects expert with the United
NationsIndustrialDevelopmentOrganisation
(UNIDO).
The panelists for the morning discussion
consisted of: Alex Haw, general manager for
corporate sustainability,Massmart; Crescent
Mushwana, research group leader for Energy
Systems,CSIREnergyCentre;DeidrePenfold,
executive director, CAIA; Ndivhuho Raphulu,
director, NCPC-SA; and Sisa Njikelana, en-
ergy patron of the SA IEE project, former
chair of the Independent Power Producers
Association and the Parliamentary Portfolio
Committee (Energy).
Alf Hartzenburg, national project man-
ager, SA Industrial Energy Efficiency Project,
NCPC-SA, began proceedingswith a keynote
address inwhich he noted that theNCPC-SA
As a side event to theAfrican Energy Indaba 2017,The National Cleaner Production
Centre (NCPC-SA) hosted an Energy Efficiency Workshop in partnership with the
Consumer Goods Council of South Africa (CGCSA) and the Chemical and Allied
Industries Association (CAIA).
MechChemAfrica’s
Glynnis Koch attends and reports.
An overview diagram of a typical biogas plant
from the by presentation Sashay Ramdharee
entitled:’ Energy Efficiency gains through
biogas’.
Addressing industrial energy
costs and availability
Case study presenter, Darryn McComb, photographed with panellists: Alex Haw; Valerie Geen; Crescent Mushwana; Deidre Penfold; Sisa Njikelana
and Ndivhuho Raphulu.
must position itself as a ‘centre of excellence’,
capable of being a source for producing ex-
perts for various energy efficiency solutions
as well as a of cleaner production systems
and data in South Africa. Driving success is
the harnessing of behavioural change, and
developing mentors, interns and gradu-
ate engineers, he said, citing examples of
the work that has already been done in
Mozambique, Myanmar, Mauritius (a tech-
nical feasibility study for thermal plants),
Germany and the USA. He also emphasised
fostering women’s empowerment, saying
thatmanyhave found, ingeneral, thatwomen
are better at managing improvements in
energy efficiency than men.
Hartzenburgbelievesthatlifecycleassess-
ments of companiesmust be fast-tracked and
the monitoring and evaluation of companies
must become more robust. Other challenges
and opportunities include: intelligent biogas
heating systems, smart power, storage tech-
nologies and intelligent drive and control
systems. Although there is a growing base of
technical expertise among managers, he not-
ed that there was no room for complacency
in the NCPC-SA. Rather, he stated: “Wemust
maintain a senseof responsibility andkeepup
the good start that has beenmade in improv-
ing energy efficiency inSouthAfrica.”Quoting
Abraham Lincoln, he added: “We must rise
with the occasion, think anew and act anew.”
People have traditionally looked towards
a specific technology to reduce electric-
ity consumption in industrial applications,
and, during one of her morning summaries
Geen pointed out that the IEE project and