The great puzzle is why we don’t build closed cycle gas turbine power generators. Yes, the future is sun and wind. But no, we cannot move from coal to sun in one great leap. Our coal stations are nearing the end of their lives far faster than we can build green power.
There are promising gas fields off our west and east coasts. There is also a global market for gas. Liquefied gas is readily transportable by ship. Gas is still by far the largest single source of power in industrialised countries, despite the green rhetoric.
The technology to build gas power is well established. Gas plants are orders of magnitude simpler than coal, and take less than a quarter of the time to build. They are 50% less polluting as they create water vapour with carbon dioxide.
Willem Cronje, Cape Town
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