South Africa has to focus on developing top-level human resources in order to ensure that the country minimises mistakes and project failures during the just energy transition (JET). So cautioned South African specialist consultancy Idea 2 Business systems engineering solutions adviser Dr Harry Teifel, on Thursday. He was addressing the Southern African Sustainable Energy Conference, in Somerset West, near Cape Town.

He highlighted that, globally, only 10% to 20% of industrial projects were successful. Yet engineers and technologists were trained by focusing on this minority of projects. They were not trained on the 80% to 90% of projects that failed. Thus, they received no training on what could and did go wrong in developing such projects.

This was important, because the world, including South Africa, was embarking on a decarbonisation journey, which would cost trillions of dollars. “This is not business as usual,” he highlighted. “This is different.”

South Africa alone was planning to spend R1.7-trillion, or $97-billion, on the JET. But experience showed that only 25% to 30% of the JET projects would succeed. The country faced losing $72-billion, with only $25-billion achieving net impact.

Each South African JET project faced no less than 12 “Valleys of Death” (VoDs) – points in the development of a project, from conception to commissioning, where it could fail (for example, due to inadequate expertise, or experience, or a lack of the investment required at any particular point). To minimise the risks posed by these VoDs, South Africa needed a strong ‘science diplomacy’ foundation, to be able to fully develop and exploit international collaborative projects, measures and investments.

Cutting the above-projected JET losses by just 1% would save $720-million, he pointed out.

“The true leader of impact is people. Who is going to do this [JET]? People,” he affirmed. “We need them to avoid mistakes, by knowing what they don’t know. We should train them around the Valleys of Death. They need to avoid these things. It’s about people, it’s about training.”