Repurposing Coal Plants: What India Can Learn from South Africa | ft. Dr. Vikesh Rajpaul

[Podcast intro]

Welcome to Season 6 of the India Energy Hour podcast. This podcast explores the most pressing hurdles and promising opportunities of India’s energy transition through an in-depth discussion on policies, financial markets, social movements, and science. Your hosts for this episode are Shreya Jay, Delhi-based energy and climate journalist, and Dr. Sandeep Pai, energy transition researcher and author. The show is produced by 101 Reporters, a pan-India network of grassroots reporters that produces original stories from rural India. If you like our podcast, please rate us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or the platform where you listen to our podcast. Your support will help us reach a larger audience.

The repurposing of coal power plants is an underexplored challenge as many countries, including India, strive to achieve net-zero targets. Some countries in the Global South, such as South Africa, have more experience with coal power plant repurposing than India.

To understand what Indian coal-fired power plant owners can learn from the South African experience, we interviewed Dr. Vikesh Rajpaul, General Manager, Just Transitions at Eskom Holdings SOC Limited. With over three decades of experience at Eskom—the largest supplier of electricity in South Africa—Dr. Rajpaul has worked across a wide range of functions, including renewables and research.

[Podcast interview]

Shreya Jai: Hello and welcome to the India Energy Hour, Dr. Rajpaul. We are delighted to have you join us here on this very important recording on such an important topic, which I think is very new in the whole energy ecosystem. Because at least in my own record of covering the coal sector and also I think in the history of coal, this is the first time across countries and economies that we are discussing repurposing of coal power plants. So an extremely interesting topic, which I myself want to learn a lot. So thanks again for joining us here and looking forward to talk more, to learn more during this particular episode.

Dr. Vikesh Rajpaul: Thank you and thank you for the invite. It’s a pleasure to be here and I’m also looking forward to the engagement.

Sandeep Pai: Yeah, so why don’t I start by asking you a personal question, Vikesh. You and I have known each other for a few years, but I just want to understand like where are you from? What is your background? How did you get into Eskom? and how did you from, I know you have, you were working in the renewable space and then, and then you got into the just energy transition and repurposing space within Eskom. So what, what has been your journey?

Dr. Vikesh Rajpaul:  Yeah, Sandeep, it’s been a long journey. I’ve been in Eskom for 32 years now. I started as an engineering training and typical EIT programs. We move around the organization. So my first stunt in Eskom was in our maintenance section where we worked on steam turbine repairs as such. And I got interested in the power generation part of the business. And when an opportunity came for a promotion and a move to a power station, I grabbed it. I saw it as a good opportunity to understand better coal-fired power stations because I’ve been working in it. At that point, I had been working in it for a few years. And yeah, so I took it as an opportunity. I immersed myself in the power station environment and it gave me a lot of good insights. Firstly, regarding community living and being away from the big bright lights of Johannesburg, as an example. And equally important, it gave me firsthand exposure of the impact of our operations on things like air quality and local environment. And you wouldn’t see those things when you work or live in a big city. You just take these things for granted. But living in those communities, because I’ve moved around across power stations as well, gave me a very good insight into, as I’ve indicated, power station operations, the challenges of communities, working with organized labor and understanding the impact on respiratory problems. As an example, my son had a lot of breathing-related challenges when he was growing up in that environment. And when we moved out, almost immediately, those challenges or those difficulties had sort of fixed themselves. So it is a reality, right, in terms of air quality impact of station operations. Climate change is a reality as well. And working in that environment gives you a good indication as to, firstly, as I’ve indicated, the life at a power station, but also the insights so that my work now, in terms of repurposing of these power stations, it fits in very nicely into the experiences that are gained at that stage. And very often we talk about connecting the dots, and you can only connect dots looking backwards. You cannot connect dots looking forward. This is Steve Jobs, by the way. And, yeah, so at that time, you’re in that environment and you don’t see the bigger picture. But it’s only as you move on and progress in life and progress with your own journey as such that you realize that you were put there for a specific purpose and a specific reason as such. And so I moved out of the power station environment in around 2007. Moved to ESCOM Research, Research, Testing and Development, that is. Looking at research, but also specifically focusing on power stations, providing consultancy services, power station operations, maintenance, as well as research to improve the efficiency and improve the operations of coal-fired power stations. And I was fortunate in 2010, I was given an opportunity within the organization to lead what was the largest renewables project at the time. Again, in the Southern Hemisphere, this was the 100-megawatt concentrating solar power plant that we had intended building in Uppington in South Africa. So I served as project director, program manager on that initiative. It gave me a good exposure and understanding of renewables, not just CSP technology, but also wind, solar PV and small-scale hydros, together with energy storage systems. So that exposure from 2010 until now, sorry, well, until around 2022, when I joined the JET office, it positioned me very nicely to have the balance of understanding from a renewables perspective, from a research perspective, as well as a deep understanding of power station operations. So it all blended into a unique individual that I am, that can address new technologies, understands the impact of repurposing, or the impact of station shutdown and the benefits of repurposing. And then from an academic perspective, I think that many engineers, we don’t have a good understanding of the finance and the business aspect of life as such. And when I did my MBA in 2000 to 2003, it was an eye-opener from a business perspective. And it helped me again in positioning the arguments, positioning, providing strategic guidance and leadership. And it groomed you, it grooms someone in terms of leadership. And then the PhD that I did was with the University of Pretoria, the Gordon Institute of Business Studies. And it focused on fake news around climate change. Because in my work in developing renewables for ESCOM, I encountered a number of instances where fake news was being used as a tool to change the narrative around climate change. And we find very often fake news being used in many contexts to change the narrative. And I was quite intrigued by that. And I decided to do a study on that. And given that, positioned me very well for this role as general manager in the Just Energy Transition Office. Thank you.

Shreya Jai: That’s quite an extensive career across the whole energy supply chain, a very interesting you know you have had experienced not only just on the coal side but renewables and i think a lot of  leaning there but i want to specifically now want to get into what repurposing of a coal power plant is , its sounds fancy you know it would mean as simple as repurposing a coal power plant but as i have understood it is a very complicated procedure and especially for a country and economy like south africa as where there is so much dependency on the coal system so lets start with the basic procedure basic steps that involved in a coal power plant repurposing that you can explain to our audience.

Dr. Vikesh Rajpaul: Sure, first isn’t a standard definition as such of repurposing, everybody seems to have their own interpretation and internally we have adopted the concept of repurposing and repowering and even they isn’t standard terminology as such, so from repowering perspective we are as an organisation technology at rustic, so while we are busy looking at the opportunities for renewables we incorporated into our coal stations, we opened to other technologies provided they are low in a thing because we are cognizant of the impact of our operations on the climate, on greenhouse gases,  on overall climate change, and as I’ve indicated earlier, from an air quality perspective. So we’re very conscious of the impact of our operations, and we repurpose, well, we’re supposed to repower to introduce low-emitting technologies into these areas. So our strategy is to decouple station operations from what we call repurposing and repowering. And what that means is that independent of station operations, irrespective of when those stations eventually do shut down, we will introduce opportunities to reduce our emissions by introducing clean energy solutions, low-emitting solutions, as well as opportunities to repurpose. Now, this gets back to the question that you’ve asked. From a repurposing perspective, we view that as being opportunities to diversify the economy around the power stations. So South Africa has a… I’m not sure how unique it is, but it is relatively unique in the sense that we have the vast majority of our coal-fired power stations in one province, and we have the vast majority of 70% of the coal mines in the same province. And we actually built our coal-fired power stations at the coal mines to reduce the cost of transportation. And this was historic. We had sufficient coal to feed into these power stations. But… And also, the average age of our power stations is in excess of 42 years. So I know that your paper spoke about 30 years to 50 years, but in average, it is around, well, just slightly in excess of 42 years. So you see, these plants are typically designed for a 50-year life. Actually, it was extended to 50 years. It was designed for 40. So many of them are reaching end of life. And while we… And I’ve mentioned this already. While we are cognizant of the impact of our operations on the climate, we need to manage the system as such from an energy perspective. We need to ensure that we have security of supply. And to do that, we cannot shut down our coal-fired power stations without having sufficient replacement capacity in whatever form it is, whether it is nuclear, conventional, whether it is small modular reactors, or even gas is part of our ambitions and part of the plans. So as indicated, we are technology agnostic. But from a least cost perspective, because when we develop projects, we always look at the cost, but we look at balancing or finding that balance in the three elements of what we call the energy trilemma. And I’m sure you are familiar with the energy trilemma that looks at balancing energy security with energy sustainability, and energy affordability. And finding that balance is not that simple. Especially when you have a community in a country that has largely been dependent on the coal value chain and coal has been the backbone of the economy as well. But in introducing new clean energy solutions, we find that renewables in the form of solar PV, coupled with energy storage systems, as well as wind, provide the least cost. So it addresses that aspect of affordability. It addresses the aspect of sustainability, but it brings into question the concept of security. Because security of supply has two components. One is balancing demand and supply, and the second is providing quality of supply. And quality of supply comes in various forms, including inertia, frequency response, voltage support, etc. So inverter-based technologies, especially as you increase your renewables penetration, does present challenges to the system operator that we need to fully understand before we can speak about massive rampdown of our coal stations. So to emphasize, for the third time, we are conscious of the impact of our operations on the climate, but we are also trying to manage the energy trilemma and manage better the security of supply component. So from a repurposing perspective, we look at, sorry, from a repowering perspective, when you look at renewables, especially from a local to the power station, perspective, we find that the jobs that you create from a renewables perspective is not sufficient to offset the jobs that you lose from a coal-fired power station. So from a country perspective, we have ambition for large-scale renewables. From a country perspective, there will be a net positive impact on jobs, specifically around the operations and maintenance, as well as the construction and installation, given the capacity of renewables that has been identified in the Integrated Resource Plan 2025. It’s a country plan as such regarding the energy direction and trajectory. So we don’t create sufficient jobs to offset the jobs that we lose. I mentioned that we have the bulk of our coal-fired power stations in one province called Mpumalanga, the best solar and wind resources in the country are in other provinces, the Northern Cape from a solar perspective, the Western and Eastern Cape from a wind perspective. But having said that, Mpumalanga still has better solar resource than many areas of Europe that drive quite aggressively renewables. So we do plan to build large-scale renewables at our power stations. One of the challenges that we have is given the concentration of coal mines and coal-fired power stations, and we know that when coal is formed, it is typically or originally formed in swamps and wetlands. And that’s what actually, I mean, it’s living trees, algae, moss, etc. That is, as they die, it compresses and it forms coal after many, many, many years, right? That’s well known. The challenge that we have is the wetlands that we have in and around our coal-fired power stations. We benefited from the access to coal, but it presents a challenge in the capacity of repowering, and the capacity of renewables that we could install in and around the power station. And therefore, we are open to other technologies, provided there are low-emitting combustion bed, a fluidized bed combustion, as an example. I mentioned small modular reactors, many other technologies. That brings me to the question that you’ve asked. Repurposing is critical to address the ills of shutting down a coal-fired power station. And like any asset, it has a defined life. So while we are not pushing for the premature shutdown of any station, there will come a time where we do have to shut it down. And when we do, we need to understand the impact on those communities that have been established in and around our facilities, right? And we have to, from a moral perspective, from an ethical perspective, not leave these communities in the lurch. They’ve been established for our benefit over a number of years, right? Over decades, in fact. We can’t just shut down and leave the power station and leave the community as it is and just walk away. We’ve done that in the past, right? Many, many years ago, we shut down coal-fired power stations. We did not, as a country, in fact, as a world, many, many countries shut down coal-fired power stations and shut down other large industries and walked away without recognizing the impact on those communities. You create ghost towns. You have a significant impact on those communities. So what we’ve done, and getting back to the question you asked regarding the steps associated with power plant repurposing, the first thing is it’s critical to engage those communities to help them understand that the reason that the power plant would eventually come or produce zero megawatts, it’s not driven by the global north, as very often is the perception. It’s not driven by us complying with funders like the World Bank, as an example, their requirements. It is purely because of the age of the asset, of the cost of operating the asset, and the impact of our operations as well does play a role in those discussions, but you need to engage those communities. And we also conducted, and it’s critical as a starting point, to conduct what’s called socio-economic impact assessment. And what those socio-economic impact assessments do is understand the opportunities that’s present in those communities, in that area or in the region, the impact of station shutdown on the communities’ impact assessment. So we’ve conducted that, and what we find is there are five capitals, as such, around which power stations and communities are impacted when you shut down a coal-fired power station. And the first is the financial and economic capital. Now this looks at household wealth, it looks at economic development and growth, it looks at unemployment in that area, that increases. So you have a significant and a detrimental impact on the financial and economic capital. There’s also an impact on the built capital, right, from a built environment, from the value of property, it drops when the largest key economic driver as such in that area is no longer functioning. There’s an immediate drop in economic value, immediate people tend to move out, a drop in property value, a drop in personal wealth. There’s also human capital, which is the third aspect, where you find, first, an exodus of skills and you find that community health deteriorates. And then you’ve got what’s called social and cultural capital, where you find the household’s sense of place is lost. You find family ties are broken where the traditional breadwinner of the house now needs to go elsewhere to seek employment. It creates destruction in the family environment. And so while there’s a positive impact from a nature or a natural capital in terms of air quality, in terms of better utilization of water and other resources, the impact and the cumulative impact of this in me, it implies the standard of living declines, the quality of life drops, and the state of those communities becomes dilapidated as such and becomes unstable. I’ll pause there and hand back to you.

Shreya Jai: Sure. Yes. There’s so many aspects to coal power plant repurposing that you shared. Some of them I didn’t even know and we’ll definitely explore the socioeconomic assessment a bit more because that is something that I related very much so sitting here in India. And a lot of aspects that you talked about do mirror what we are seeing here in the Indian coal system. There is a section of energy economists and policy planners who are trying to put in the language of repurposing into India’s future energy planning. Something that, you know, Sandeep, you have explored in your recent paper which looks at South Africa, India and the United States about how a systems level repurposing of coal assets can happen. What are the lessons drawn from these three very, very different economies? I should not talk more about it. But, you know, listening to Dr. Rajpal, what are your thoughts on this? And, you know, what were your key insights especially with regards to South African market? And then if you can talk a little bit about what lessons India can draw in or rather what you thought or studied when you were observing the Indian market?

Sandeep Pai: Yeah, no, thanks, Shreya. So just in that paper we looked at coal mines, coal fired power plants, rail networks and port terminals. So the whole coal value chain and repurposing aspects. So just coming back to the coal fired power plants. So I’ll just kind of start with the US and then come to India and then explain what my observation of South Africa’s experience has been and what lessons can India learn. So in the US there is no policy of repurposing. It is left to the individual asset owners and they have to navigate, they have to be interested to do any kind of repurposing. And so the result has been that many power stations have simply shut down or have been converted into gas fired power station. The biggest issue here is the whole social component that Dr. Rajpaul was talking about that like there is no social assessment, there is no just energy transition planning or thinking. There may be one or two odd examples here and there but overall neither there is a policy direction, neither there is a strategic direction. So coal fired power plants are simply getting converted to gas fired power plants or shutting down. That’s kind of what’s happening in the US. In India, as you know, not many plants have actually shut down but government of India is unfortunately actually discouraging repurposing because for them if they are saying repurposing that means things have to shut down first. That’s the assumption and so unfortunately repurposing as a topic is actively discouraged within the Indian policy makers. There was a notification by Central Electricity Authority that said we should not talk about repurposing until 2030 which I think is a misconception because from my experience from South Africa I mean I think one of the big things that India and US and other countries can learn from ESCOM’s jet strategy and general repurposing strategy within South Africa is this idea that Dr. Rajpaul was talking about decoupling between you know repurposing and power station shutdown. I think the assumption is first shut down then repurpose. So I just want to you know take it back to Dr. Rajpaul and if you can talk a little bit about why it’s important to decouple power station shut down with repurposing and if you can give example from Komati and then your recent experience with the other power stations that you’re planning that would be great.

Dr. Vikesh Rajpaul: Yeah absolutely. Projects take a long time to develop even if you have a proper project lifecycle model even if you think you’ve got all of your ducks in a row projects inevitably find difficulties find challenges you’ve got regulatory approvals projects in general take a long time to develop. if you don’t start early and this is a key lesson that we’ve learned from Komati at Komati and we knew in house we knew that we needed to build solar PV we knew that we needed to build wind at Komati we knew that we needed to have replacement generating capacity at site before the last production unit was ramped down to zero right but because of similar issues that you’ve just mentioned now because of an uncertain policy environment because of an organization that was really uncertain about the direction of travel regarding renewables we simply didn’t do that right we didn’t do it and when the power station shut down that’s when everybody saw the impact of station shutdown on that community based around Komati power station what very often gets ignored is that and I mentioned this earlier our coal-fired power stations are built at the coal mines the mine feeding Komati power station shut down several years before the power station shut down there was no jet strategy or there was no energy transition or just transition strategy in place it simply shut down and a number of employees were left without work that had a direct impact as well when the power station shut down the brunt of that community dissatisfaction as such was born by Eskom we found that the community felt that Eskom had let them down it became an Eskom challenge the importance of decoupling station operations from repurposing and repowering is that you wean communities away from dependence on the core value chain and it takes time to do that it doesn’t happen overnight when we started engaging again this is based on the lesson learned from Komati we started engaging communities at other power stations when and I was personally involved in those engagements when we started talking to the community around crude play power station they did not want to hear about the power station shutting down it was not even a point of discussion it was you will not talk to us about station shutdown we went through and our position was not station shutdown right because as I mentioned we are not positioning premature shutdown of any of our power stations but this is the messaging that goes out you shut down Komati you’ve seen what happened there you will not shut down this power station it’s a process of social dialogue engaging the community helping them understand what climate change is about what air quality is about what the power station environment is about how it impacts them going through a process of engaging understanding that there is life beyond coal there are opportunities to diversify the economy so that you’re not fully dependent on a single source from a resource perspective for your household’s income so let’s work together to see how we can diversify the economy around the power station at crude play power station last week Wednesday we launched what is called the crude play climate smart horticulture center we’ve done that in partnership with the kingdom of the netherlands they’ve got exceptional capabilities in climate smart horticulture they are second in the world when it comes to export of fruits and vegetables that’s produced in the country second to the USA and the netherlands is one of the smallest countries in Europe we worked with them in partnership to establish a climate smart horticulture center at crude power station while the power plant remains operational independent of the power plant operations because we see the value of economic diversification the community now sees the value as well we are using the center to train and develop what we call agripreneurs agricultural entrepreneurs train them on climate smart agriculture become employers become well entrepreneurs right and after they’ve gone through the 12 month training program we envision creating thousands of jobs in the agricultural value chain not just in climate smart horticulture in various forms of agriculture in the agricultural value chain like pack houses like agricultural processing hubs logistics associated with transportation of the produce we’re also looking at a biogas facility to feed heat carbon dioxide fertilizer and electricity into the center right so it gives you an indication as to how we could diversify an economy while the power station operates this community after a few years would become totally independent that they would not be totally reliant on the coal on the power station as being the source of income that does not mean that we are not going to address the challenge of employees we still have a challenge that we need to look at what happens to the employees at this power station what happens to our contractors and we have plans in place that looks at various options regarding reskilling upskilling providing new opportunities as well and I’ve given you one example of economic diversification that’s decoupled from station operations at other power stations we’re exploring things and getting back to climate smart horticulture it’s not ESCOM’s core business we know nothing about agriculture right but in supporting the initiative it serves as a catalyst for future for further development in the area and we were happy to do that knowing that by co-creating this facility by making the land available by getting experts in to operate maintain the facility to provide the chaining that’s different from our core business we now get back to the concept of weaning communities away from the core value chain that is one example at Kumati we’re looking at many other initiatives we have a suite of initiatives that we are exploring at Kumati sadly we didn’t start those initiatives years ago because if we had started them in say 2018 2019 those would have been fully functional and operational by now so another example we know that a coal-fired power station has hundreds of tons of copper cables that’s required for power station operations right when you shut down the plant you now have access to copper in the form of these cables we are currently advanced with the development of a copper recycling facility at Kumati power station to take the copper from across the power stations nationwide to take the copper eventually when we do get the approvals to extract the copper from Kumati to recycle and in recycling you produce firstly pure copper rice well it’s recycled it’s copper what we call rice it’s fine copper grains you also extract the steel and you extract the insulation and each of those things can be beneficiated into other forms of economic opportunity as such so from a copper perspective you extract it from a coal-fired power station you recycle it and you produce as an example a copper mat an earthing mat that goes into a substation or that goes into a renewables plant or a bus bar that goes into a transformer that feeds into a renewables plant and it’s a circular economy that we are trying to stimulate by creating alternative forms of economic activity we will not operate a copper recycling plant it’s not our core business we will get people we will partner with people that can operate these plants it will become their business they would manage the financial sustainability of the initiative they would manage the day-to-day operations of the facility but from our perspective it is critical that whatever opportunity we introduce to the power station to the communities has to be sustainable you cannot have an initiative that create jobs for two years you have this thing running and then two years later the very people that you’ve trained are now unemployed again so it’s a lengthy process that we follow in developing the business cases to ensure that the initiative is sustainable that you can it becomes self-sustaining as such so you you fund the operations and maintenance from the sale of products as an example as opposed to constant grant funding or constant support from ESCOM so that’s the repurposing strategy sorry yeah

Shreya Jai: so so basically one sort of ecosystem is replacing the existing ecosystem you mentioned about copper these are clearly not the industry agriculture which you know ESCOM can run but then a new whole ecosystem is being developed out of repurposing and on this aspect I wanted I’m very curious to know about the financing aspects because not only there is a socio-economic angle which we explored then there’s this whole new angle which wherein you’re creating a whole industry out there which is replacing the existing industry in India at least we have seen that wherever a coal mine opens a whole cities get developed and you know a repurposing obviously brings in the imminent fears that you just mentioned that you know everything would be shut down but here you are offering a possibility where a brand new industrial socio-economic ecosystem gets created Sandeep your paper talks about the financing challenges that are there not just in South Africa but the other two subject nations that you have I’m sorry can you quickly touch upon what are these hurdles and then Dr. Rajpal I’d like you to come in and talk about South Africa specifically but Sandeep can I start with you first

Sandeep Pai: yeah I mean I think the the big challenge in terms of financing is that like in most places this has not been done I will go back to that question so there is a lot of misinformation about like how do you do repurposing and what are the different components that require financing etc and the specific examples are that let’s why only coal-fired power plants when you when you think about coal mines and the repurposing of coal mines you know every mine that has to be shut down in India or US and in other contexts has to have some kind of bonding which means that company has to set aside some money and when they shut down they have to do some progressive repurposing for mines and then when eventually they shut down they have to do the final mine closure but the challenge happens is often this source of money that the company has set aside in I’m talking about globally it’s not enough to do this kind of coal asset repurposing and thinking about external sources I mean there is a little bit of multilateral money in terms of sort of you know getting some pilot projects done but I think the biggest challenge that I see in this is like is there a business case that a company can show and using that business case not just as a demonstration project but using a business case for diversifying their own income resource I think once that happens I think coal repurposing will have a business case I mean of course we have to make it socially just but from a financing point of view I think there’s not clear global models of repurposing that actually will generate revenue for the company yet there may be some examples here and there but not at scale but this is a great question back to Vikesh you know in terms of are there financial models for the company the asset owner to you know do the right thing do just energy transition do repurposing before closure but at the same time make money is there a business yes

Dr. Vikesh Rajpaul: yes yes there is and it comes in the way in innovative thinking and if you believe that something is not your core business and you just turn it away as such you lose value and I’ll give you examples I’ll give you two examples we have as a country we need to develop rapidly our transmission infrastructure to allow for additional renewables to come online in those provinces that I mentioned earlier that has high wind and solar resource we need to build something like 14,000 kilometers of new transmission infrastructure by 2032 now that requires a significant amount of steel structures and steel components we have a project in place that we are taking forward in the organization that looks at steel lattice structure component manufacturing at Komati Power Station with Eskom transmission the National Transmission Company of South Africa and this is what we are positioning and we are trying to get that across to them they would benefit significantly and we have done the financial analysis the returns on investment significant from a payback from an NPV from an overall IRR perspective the payback is significant to the organization so while you may see it as an expense in having to set up a steel fabrication plant while you see it as not being our core business because our core business is electricity transmission generation and distribution there is a lot of value of making our infrastructure available provided it does not impact the operations of the running plant right and there’s a lot of infrastructure that we have at the power stations a lot of land that we have that we purchased throughout the years around the power station that we could utilize for something like this you manufacture those steel network structures supply and this is not ESCOM this is we act as a catalyst it’s more an incubation of a business as such you provide the offtake agreement to them that if they produce a certain tonnage of steel lettuce structures as an example you will be the offtake for the first certain whatever tonnage it is based on the business case you incubate the business but the returns on investment comes from organizational savings instead of you spending that money to external companies instead of you importing from I don’t want to say China or India but I’ll say it instead of you importing from China or India you manufacture those things locally you save from an overall cost perspective another example second example and this speaks to not looking at a coal-fired power station repurposing in isolation because very often we take a power station in isolation we view it as an island and we only look at what you can do at that station without realizing that the holding company has many of these assets many of these assets that will still continue to operate even beyond the operations or the shutdown of that specific plant that you are working on and it brings me to the example personal protective equipment we use that across all our power stations whether it is coveralls or we call it overalls whether it is helmets or glasses or safety boots all of those things we have a requirement within the organization and it’s an immense amount of money that we spend on an annual basis for PPE we have done the business case it’s a positive business case if we were to manufacture PPE at Komati power station and supply to Eskom even if you started Eskom generation across the power stations excluding transmission and distribution it’s a massive company we employ something like 44,000 people right it’s a huge organization the savings comes from or the benefits should I say comes from the saving to the organization so while we provide an offtake agreement for a certain and obviously it has to meet quality and the safety requirements for PPE right but your savings come from you procuring from this entity and you procure at a much lower rate than you would from the external market as such so you self-supporting you fund the initiatives through your savings and it’s not a question of diversifying your activities or your portfolio we remain it will always be or maybe always is a very difficult term to use right but for the foreseeable future we will be an electricity possibly an energy company but transmitting distributing and generating not necessarily in that order but generating and distributing and transmitting electrons or electricity but you see there’s value in these other initiatives that we could support that has benefit to ESCOM

Shreya Jai: right thanks for explaining that and it does offer a very fresh new perspective both of you actually we are short of time we are almost out of time but I will squeeze in the last question and just very quickly I wanted to understand you know what has been the hardest part of aligning your technical plans with the real just outcomes you talked about the socio-economic challenges and you know the ecosystem that it is creating and everything but what was some of those few things that shocked your planning very much that you had to you know go back and go back to the drawing board and change your plans altogether

Dr. Vikesh Rajpaul: there were a number of things and we used Komati as a flagship project but to understand the intricacies of an energy transition so the Komati experience was invaluable in giving us the lessons learnt as such and getting back to the question what we found was the importance of sequencing the importance of starting early which is what we’ve done at the other power stations the importance of social dialogue funding is also a key component what we found was that for Komati as an example we had only secured the funding from the World Bank approximately eight months after the last production unit was shut down and that is far too late does not give you enough time to develop and to build the projects that you intend building so while we had plans in place we were slow in securing the funding and it’s critical that the funding is secured the correct type of funding as well not high commercial rates but concessional funding and to a certain extent grant funding that allows you to do these initiatives that’s not part of your core business a reduced cost of capital helps with the positive business case in many of these other initiatives that I’ve spoken about because it helps you get these initiatives that you wouldn’t ordinarily support it helps you get them across the line so equally important the value of upskilling reskilling of communities and staff and workers in general to participate in the new value chain whether it is a renewables value chain whether it is re-industrialization or agricultural or ecotourism which is also something that we are exploring the importance of training up front and reskilling and upskilling is critical so we have learned a number of lessons it goes back to the socio-economic impact studies that we had conducted it goes back to taking those lessons learned and implementing across the power stations and yeah thank you

Shreya Jai: great thank you so much this was a very informative episode for me, thank you so much for sharing details you know in as much detail exhaustive details as you could and it was very heartening for me to you know get so so many detailed insights from you so thank you so much for speaking with us

Sandeep Pai: thank you for my side as well.           

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