Double blow for Sasol

Sasol’s bid to have sulfur dioxide emissions at its Secunda petrochemical complex, the world’s biggest single-site source of greenhouse gases as well as a host of other pollutants, exempted from limits to be imposed in 2025, has failed.

The decision by South Africa’s national air quality officer comes as Barbara Creecy, the country’s environment minister, steps up pressure on the nation’s two biggest polluters, Eskom and Sasol, to comply with emissions limits.

The ruling, which Sasol will appeal, pertains to sulfur dioxide emissions from the coal-fired boilers at the plant northeast of the country. The Johannesburg-based company said in a statement it has complied with the limits imposed on the bulk of emissions sources at Secunda and its other plants.

Sulfur dioxide pollution has been tied to acid rain, respiratory disease, strokes and heart attacks.

“If sulfur-dioxide emissions from Secunda are not addressed, everything else is window dressing,” said Lauri Myllyvirta, lead analyst at the Helsinki-based Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, by text message.

Sasol, South Africa’s biggest company by revenue, had applied to have the concentration of the pollutant in its emissions measured using an alternative method to the one used by the environment department, it said in the statement. The limits it must comply with come into force on 1 April 2025.

It said the company had spent more than R7 billion curbing emissions from its Secunda and Sasolburg plants and its Natref oil refinery over the past year.

The most effective way of cutting sulfur dioxide pollution is by installing flue-gas desulfurization units that both Sasol and Eskom have previously said could cost billions of dollars to install and would need significant supplies of lime and water.

Still, air pollution in the area around coal-fired plants operated by Sasol and Eskom east and south of Johannesburg, South Africa’s biggest city, rivals and sometimes exceeds levels in some of the most polluted cities on Earth. The pollution has been tied to hundreds of deaths a year by researchers.

For the fiscal year through June 2022, Secunda produced 137,300 tons of sulfur oxides and 49.2 million tons of climate-warming carbon dioxide, or its equivalent, directly from its plants and assets.

This is more greenhouse gas than Norway or Portugal. Sulfur dioxide, produced alongside greenhouse gases, doesn’t warm the planet.

Secunda is the eighth-biggest source of sulfur dioxide in South Africa after seven coal-fired power plants owned by Eskom, according to data compiled by Myllyvirta.

The decision comes a day after Sasol was told it might be prosecuted for excessive pricing of natural gas in South Africa.

Read: Competition Commission nails Sasol for excessive pricing