Environment & Sustainable Development

IPSA strives to ensure that wherever possible, and in so far as is practical, the most environmentally conscious approach is taken to our operations. All our plants undergo a rigorous Environmental Impact Assessment. The impact of decisions is assessed on an individual basis to allow the most flexible approach.

A measure of our success is that our IPP at Newcastle has been at the forefront of achieving ground-breaking United Nations approval for energy saving projects which create CER carbon credits from using waste heat from gas turbines. Newcastle was both South Africa’s first gas-fired IPP combined heat and power project (CHP) and its first gas-fired IPP combined cycle gas turbine project (CCGT). IPSA's Newcastle plant operating as a CCGT has a thermal efficiency of nearly 56 per cent., which means that it produces around 40 per cent. less CO2 than a conventional coal-fired plant for every kilowatt hour of electricity it generates. As a result the plant has one of the lowest emissions of CO2 of any thermal power plant in South Africa.