Smarter Hydrogen future for South African transport: Chuck Stephens

Key topics:Cecilia Payne's hydrogen discovery reshaped astronomy foreverSA’s EV push ignores grid limits and hydrogen alternativesOn-board hydrogen kits could cut fuel use and boost jobs in SA.Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox at 5:30am weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa’s bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here.The auditorium doors will open for BNIC#2 on 10 September 2025 in Hermanus. For more information and tickets, click here..By Chuck Stephens .Cecilia Payne is not a household word, but it should be. For when she wrote her PhD thesis in 1925, she announced a shocking discovery: the Sun—along with most stars—is made almost entirely of hydrogen, the lightest element in the universe. This challenged what every expert believed at the time. Using spectral data, she cracked open the sky. Henry Norris Russell was her senior. He told her not to publish. When he confirmed her findings four years later, he got most of the credit.As a woman, this intrepid scientist had already overcome the odds just to get that far. The University of Cambridge declined to award her a degree because of her gender. Thus, she left England and moved to Harvard. Where she earned the first doctorate in astronomy from Radcliffe. Her thesis has been called the most brilliant ever written in astronomy.Cecilia’s work became the foundation for nearly everything we now know about stellar composition. In due course, she was promoted to be Harvard’s first-ever woman professor from internal advancement. Later, she became the first woman to chair a department. But when she died in 1979, it was lost on the media. There was no memorial. Just hydrogen - everywhere.South Africa’s energy and transport policies are following the same path into oblivion. Both converge on a nonsensical plan for 2030 or 2035. They say that the internal combustion engine (petrol or diesel) will be replaced with a battery powered future – brought to us by EVs.Do they also believe in Santa Claus? One only has to wonder, what have the policymakers in these two departments been smoking?Transport has seen a world-wide shift to EVs in recent decades. However, of the 1.6 billion automobiles on the planet, only 58 million are EVs. That is a global average of 3.5 percent. Not even 4 out of 100 as of yet. Whereas in South Africa, the proportions are more like 2 out of 1000 automobiles. Increasing this proportion is predicated on rolling out more charging stations hither and yon. There are also implied changes to the assembly lines that manufacture automobiles and the 100 000 jobs in that industry.This shift to EVs has been inspired by the Green Movement, trying to reduce carbon emissions from diesel and petrol automobiles. Meanwhile, to generate more electricity to add charging EVs to the sagging grid, it means we will have to burn more coal. Out of the frying pan and into the fire!There are other claims made about EVs that are difficult to substantiate. Like the claim that it costs less to build them. That is hard to prove if you include the upstream costs of mining the rare earth minerals needed for the batteries. Most EVs have a 450-kilogram battery. To make one battery, mining has to extract 230 000 kilograms of rock. Then comes the crushing, processing, refining and transport. In short, it is hard to compare and calculate whether this claim is true or not. Not to mention all the environmental degradation implied in that scale of mining operations..Read more:.Hydrogen power takes off in SA: A game-changer for clean energy and jobs – Chuck Stephens.Energy issues are also misrepresented. For example, it is rarely noted that moving electricity is five times more expensive than moving petrol or diesel. The infrastructure of South Africa’s electricity grid comes at a very high cost. This has nothing to do with the source issue of electricity generation. For two decades, building new coal-generating plants has been the priority. Supply. But this means that the depreciating electricity grid has been largely ignored, and it has long passed its sell-by date. That will be the next challenge, and more than likely chapter 2 in the load-shedding saga.Long-distance power lines transmit direct current (Thomas Edison’s favourite). Then they build sub-stations to transform that into alternating current (Nicola Tesla’s favorite). The costs of the transmission towers, cables and transformers is astronomical. Compared to the pumps and pipes needed to move petrol and diesel from refineries to service stations where end-users fill up.Scientists and researchers are working hard at producing a new fuel called “green hydrogen” – from coal. This has the added benefit of zero emissions, the only byproduct is water, not carbon. But refining and then distributing green hydrogen is not going to happen in South Africa by 2030 or even 2035. This is a good long-range strategy that would make Cecilia Payne proud. But there is a “quick-win” strategy offered by hydrogen. It is generally called “on-board Hydrogen”. Very simply, each engine can be fitted with a small circuit that uses low-voltage from the car battery to split water (H2o) into hydrogen and oxygen gas. This is done by electrolysis in a small hydrogen reactor. The gases are then cleaned of nitrates and impurities, and then fed into the air intake of the petrol or diesel engines.The results can be astounding, although they vary from one model or motor to another. Fuel consumption is reduced, as are the carbon emissions out of the tailpipe. The car enjoys longer engine life and even a bit of extra power. Because into the combustion chambers, there is a steady flow not just of air but air enriched with hydrogen and oxygen. Hydrogen is very explosive and this improves the engine combustion. Normally, about 60 percent of fuel injected is burned, the rest exiting as pollution. Now about 90 percent is burned, including all the carbon residues. This reduced emissions and longer engine life.We come full circle back to Cecilia Payne, who discovered that this Hydrogen is the most common element in the universe. Water is life, because it is two-thirds hydrogen. It’s ubiquitous and explosive. The on-board Hydrogen kit only operates when you turn on the ignition, and it shuts off when you stop the engine. There is no stored hydrogen and thus no safety issues..Read more:.EU grants €32M to boost SA’s green hydrogen industry.Back to transport. South Africa has 12 million automobiles. Imagine the reduction in crude oil imports and the savings to the Treasury, if 50 percent (i.e. 6 million) of those vehicles could reduce their fuel consumption rate by 25%. That would be a 12.5 percent drop in crude oil imports. And carbon emissions would be much reduced as well. A 12.5% drop in crude oil imports would save the Minister of Finance about R225 million per month based on the value that was imported in July 2024.The National Development Plan calls for 50 percent of homes to have solar water heaters by 2030. Why not 50 percent of automobiles fitted with on-board Hydrogen as well? This could have a major impact on youth unemployment.But like Cecilia Payne herself, this quick-win strategy is being overlooked. The government likes to splash big money around on new research labs and coal-generation stations. In the past year, with funding from the Energy and Water SETA and the Chieta, 190 youth in Mpumalanga have been trained to install these kits. It is not rocket science. Three of the four trainers are women following in Cecilia’s footsteps – Hlengiwe Vilakazi, Charlotte Charquilla and Judi Valentia. The men they work with have no intention of upstaging them. Amusa Paziwela is the other trainer. Jacky Mdaka is the logistician. Maxwell Manzini is the training manager.Sometimes solutions are so obvious that they are not recognised for what they truly are. As the psalmist envisaged: “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone".Long live Cecilia Payne, long live!

Smarter Hydrogen future for South African transport: Chuck Stephens

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