South Africa needs to strengthen its resolve to seize the amazing opportunities presented by what amounts to “doing the right thing” on the climate-change mitigation front.

South Africa is not only well placed to take immediate steps to initiate a meaningful economic decarbonisation programme but it will also show a far-sightedness in doing so that will stand the country in very good stead in global export markets.

Without doubt, the world will view exports more kindly if they come from clean and green electricity and from countries with climate-positive roadmaps.

For many years, aluminium produced in neighbouring Mozambique from clean hydroelectric power has been preferred to aluminium produced in South Africa from what are considered dirty power stations. That sentiment has now been magnified many times across the world.

Going green makes economic sense. Not only is the generation of electricity with the help of the sun and the wind the lowest-cost and highest-job-creation option, but it also puts us in a preferable export position.

There is also the compelling opportunity to pass renewable green electricity through seawater at the coast and acid mine drainage and other contaminated water inland to produce green hydrogen with the help of electrolysers that use platinum group metal (PGM) cathodes and anodes. Moreover, liquid organic hydrogen carrier technology allows the hydrogen to use existing transport, storage and filling station infrastructure.

Hydrogen can thus be transported and traded like oil. What is more, it is effectively electricity in waiting because it becomes electricity when passed through a fuel cell, which again uses PGM cathodes and anodes.

So, the country has superior sun, prime wind, adequate land, PGMs, trained personnel who have been producing hydrogen from renewables for many years, seawater, contaminated water and electrolyser expertise to desalinate more water than is needed to produce hydrogen and pass on the excess to water-short local authorities.

In reality, South Africa has the wherewithal to target a no-carbon energy position in several situations.

In between, synthetic fuels producer Sasol, which benefited for so long from taxpayer funding before listing, needs to revert to green hydrogen and not burn coal to produce clean power fuels, which can be dispensed into existing internal combustion engine vehicles, big and small, to ensure zero emission at relatively low to, sometimes, no capital outlay.

In this case, “doing the right thing” also presents a compelling business case and leadership should see itself as obliged to look after the rights of future generations and to set the country on a just transition course as early as the start of 2020.

Failure to do so will be a dereliction of duty that is punished at the polls.