Sustainability

Environmental

Energy Efficiency

In June 2009, the Department of Mineral Resources published a national energy efficiency strategy for South Africa. PPC, in conjunction with the Association of Cementitious Material Producers, provided comments on this document to the authorities. PPC supports proposed recommendations for major energy savings, namely replacing old technologies with new and employing best-management practices.

The target for energy reduction at PPC is in line with the energy efficiency accord of 15% below 2000 levels by 2015.

PPC achieved a 17% reduction in energy consumption per ton of cement, lime and dolomite against the 2000 baseline. This implies that the energy efficiency accord targets have been met ahead of the compliance timeframe (2015).

Figure: PPC energy consumption vs 2000 base year=100

PPC's energy consumption

PPC has decreased its energy consumption per ton of cement, lime and dolomite by 6% from 2008 to 2009 through lower fuel consumption due to the new kiln at Dwaalboom and the decrease in tons of slag milled at Saldanha.

Through the internal auditing process, PPC has identified and corrected energy-consumption levels reported in previous annual reports. PPC will continue to improve on the accuracy and transparency of data reported through more rigorous assurance processes.

The Batsweledi and Ntšhafatso projects illustrate PPC's approach to invest in the most modern equipment with high energy-efficiency standards.

Figure: Energy Consumption in 2009

	Terajoules	Percentage
Direct energy consumption	-	-
Coal	24 025	89%
Spent Pot Liner	170	1%
Diesel	553	2%
Indirect energy consumption	-	-
Electricity	2197	8%
Total	26 946	100%

The breakdown of energy sources in the production process is roughly 89% from coal consumption, 8% from electricity consumption, 2% from diesel consumption and 1% from spent pot liner (waste material from the aluminium industry used as an input material in the cement and lime operations).

PPC is also implementing best practices to ensure all new capital projects achieve an energyefficiency certificate rating as defined by the National Energy Efficiency Agency.

All plants are participating in an energy audit to identify areas for improving energy consumption and efficiency. A project implemented at our Jupiter plant in Germiston involves intergrinding fly ash: because fly ash is so fine, it does not all need to be milled with the clinker, and is therefore fed into separators and only the coarse fraction milled with the clinker after milling. This has produced significant energy savings.

Virtualisation PPC's IT department has implemented a virtualisation project. Virtualisation is the process of placing more than one operating system or 'guest' onto a single server. Each guest is independent of the other guests, yet has access to common components on the host server. This introduces efficiency while driving down operating costs. Benefits of virtualisation per site include reducing the number of servers from 10 physical units to three virtual servers. Virtual services generate 10% of the heat and need 10% of the cooling required by the physical units. What does this mean for green computing? Less power used Increased efficiency Longer replacement cycles Lower cooling requirements Fewer disposals of environmentally unfriendly pieces of metal. A pilot project was initiated at Hercules in June 2009. PPC intends rolling out this project across the group with final implementation by May 2010.