Cleaner fire: the HELE-CFB programme
If coal stays in South Africa’s energy mix, it has to burn cleaner and harder-working. We took high efficiency, low emissions fluidised bed technology from first studies to a nationally co-funded localisation programme.
The grid needs power the climate can live with
South Africa’s energy security runs on coal and will for years under any honest plan. So the question is not whether coal burns, but how well. Modern circulating fluidised bed boilers run hotter on efficiency and cooler on emissions, and they can burn low-grade coal and even discard. The technology exists abroad. What was missing here was local proof, local skills and local manufacture.
Prove it here, then build it here
From the first CFB studies in 2017, the programme built the local case for high efficiency, low emissions combustion. Phase I of the clean coal technology project was completed in the 2025/26 year with the CSIR, and the Board approved a R10 million Phase II with co-funding from the CSIR and Eskom, and SANEDI’s support secured. Days after year-end, the HELE-CFB Localisation Programme launched, on 1 April 2026, in support of the Integrated Resource Plan 2025, with Coaltech at the centre. A member research project became a national industrial programme.
A seat at the national table
HELE-CFB is what our widened lens looks like in practice: coal judged on value, not volume, inside the whole energy system. Phase I gave the technology local evidence. The localisation programme converts that into skills, supply chains and manufacturing ambition aligned to the IRP. For members it holds open a future where the coal value chain supplies the country’s cleanest coal power. For the country, it is energy security with a falling emissions curve.
The evidence. Every claim traces to a published report.
In the news
The localisation programme launch in April 2026 put clean coal power back on the national news agenda.
ENGINEERING NEWSNational partners launch the HELE CFB Localisation Programme1 Apr 2026↗CSIRSouth Africa launches HELE CFB localisation programme in support of the IRPApr 2026↗MINING WEEKLYClean coal tech required in energy transition29 Nov 2024↗Where this goes next
Efficiency is the reduction lever the sector baseline will measure. Related: The Emissions Baseline. Alternate Uses of Coal.