AHREN POSTHUMUS: World Bank battery boom forecast for SA sounds good, but we can do better

A recent report released by the World Bank has suggested SA could experience rapid growth in energy-storage demand over the next five years. The report (“SA & Southern Africa: Battery Market & Value Chain Assessment”) focuses on the upstream battery value chain for both electric vehicles (EVs) and the energy storage system (ESS) markets.

The suggested rise in demand was attributed to the transformation of our energy sector to include more renewables. It proposes that SA could play a big role in the global battery value chain, with the potential for 10GWh-15GWh of domestic demand for battery energy storage by 2030 alone. 

Our national government is procuring large quantities of grid-scale battery energy storage to support the integration of renewable energy and to improve the fragile state of our grid. The report shared SA’s plan to target 2GW of energy storage as part of its Integrated Resource Plan (IRP), which makes provision for 26GW of renewable energy to be added to the grid by 2030, while Eskom retires 15GW of its coal power plants. 

While we are well endowed with many of the minerals that are required for the manufacture of lithium-ion batteries (the dominant chemistry for battery energy storage) and have some early-stage activity within our lithium-ion battery value chain, the private sector should really consider focusing its funds elsewhere. 

Lithium-ion batteries are costly to manufacture and harmful to the environment. They generally only serve whoever buys them, which would perpetuate poverty in the long term. The World Bank may be correct in its assumptions regarding the potential growth of this market, but why lean into World Bank insights when we have the means and the resources to create far larger batteries, using renewable energy, solar technology and the infrastructure that is already available to us? We can, and should, motivate the private sector to invest in these environmentally friendly and inclusive solutions instead.

Untapped potential

SA has untapped potential in terms of its capacity to build large batteries that store energy, mechanically, using something as simple as gravity. We have a number of abandoned mine shafts that remain a danger to the public, which we could use to store energy instead.

By using large bodies of water and solar-powered energy, we could reliably pump water against the flow of gravity within these shafts to create potential energy that could be released (back down the shafts) across spinning turbines that are able to convert the potential energy into electricity.

We could also use the shafts to store energy by lifting and dropping heavy concrete using the existing infrastructure at the mine. Ideally, we could then use the excess energy stored in these systems to lessen the load on Eskom when demand for electricity is at its peak. 

Not only would this provide us with a renewable and stable power storage, it would also create hundreds of jobs at these abandoned mining shafts. These solutions are extremely cost-effective to set up and would be straightforward to maintain given the fact that the majority of the infrastructure required is already available to be put to good use.

Using abandoned mine shafts as a mechanism to store excess energy would offer South Africans an environmentally friendly solution that serves all members of society (while the private import of lithium-ion batteries would only serve one buyer).

This is already taking place in the Western Cape at the Steenbras Dam, where a successful pumped-storage hydroelectricity scheme has supplemented Cape Town’s electricity supply during periods of peak demand. Most Capetonians experience a lower level of load-shedding to the rest of the country as a result. 

The World Bank report does argue that the development of a battery market and value chain in SA could create a lucrative industry capable of generating up to $2bn in revenue a year by 2032 with tens of thousands of jobs. These may appear to be great figures, but they are underpinned by an assumption that we would be able to drive growth in the EV market at the same rate as China — which is wholly impossible when our government is yet to set EV adoption targets to reduce carbon emissions from the transport sector. 

Our automotive industry would also have to pivot towards the local production of EVs and their components. So while SA’s R1.5-trillion Just Energy Transition Investment Plan (JET-IP) focuses predominantly on investment in the electricity value chain and new-energy vehicles, there is little indication from the government that any of this potential has been measured to be managed effectively.

The real argument around a budding battery market in SA should rather focus on a renewable approach that is able to work in synergy with our national electricity crisis and the emergency situation we now find ourselves in. We need large quantities of renewable power, solar PV and wind, which will have to be supported with energy storage systems, of course. But why not consider the benefits of investing in pumped hydro battery energy storage systems instead? 

• Posthumus is spokesperson for the SunCash Initiative.