We are thought leaders in the management of natural resources as a flux.
South Africa is an integral part of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region. We recognize that what we do in South Africa will have an impact on the region and vice versa. In this regard we believe that South Africa and the SADC region is constrained in terms of two critical natural resources: water and energy.
We are therefore a New Water and New Energy company and are part of the emerging new Cleantech sector that is set to become the next "big thing".
As a social entrepreneur we believe in a social contract between water, geothermal energy and socioeconomic development. We recognize that development challenges in Southern Africa are at such a level of complexity that governments alone cannot change things for our greater good without the support of the private sector.
Part of our role as social entrepreneurs is to bring private sector capacity to bear on government initiatives, where appropriate, thereby aligning the objectives of the private sector with government strategies. We have chosen a corporation as a vehicle, because it can raise capital, supply the necessary governance structure and attract suitable human capacity.
As a company we offer an attractive return on investment, but in a way that deepens democracy, creates social stability and enables South Africa to take its rightful place among the respected nations of the world, economically, culturally and intellectually.
New Water?
South Africa has at this time, reached the limit of its available water and any future economic development will need New Water. That New Water could be water that is mobilized from ever-distant sources such as the Zambezi and Congo River basins, which is technically feasible but highly costly in terms of money and ecological consequences; or it can be mobilized by what is known as the "soft path". To find out more about our views on the soft path approach, please click here.
We believe in the soft path approach. Technically water is a flux but historically it has been managed as if it was a stock.
TouchStone Resources seeks to provide the thought leadership, capital and technical skills needed to unlock the enormous potential of water as a flux.
New Energy?
South Africa has also approached the limit of our readily available energy resources and expansion into new coal fields will have a number of unanticipated consequencess for human health, food security and water availability to the rest of the nation. This is mostly associated with the sulphur cycle that produces sulphates in the form of acid mine drainage and sulphur dioxide in the form of acid rain. We believe that this needs to be addressed by combining our national water policy with our national energy policy and our national food security policy. To read more about this click here.
In Southern Africa, renewable energy alternatives such as geothermal resources remain largely unknown and we make a strong case for geothermal power in developing countries as a far cheaper alternative to large-scale conventional energy systems that require massive investment. This also brings the added benefit of carbon trading.
Geothermal energy taps heat from underground rock and shows potential as an alternative to coal and oil-fired power generation. Geothermal electricity generation is not only technologically viable but also a cost-effective answer to the challenge of historic power generation methods.
Geothermal energy is 100% indigenous, environmentally-friendly and is a technology that has been under-utilized for too long.
We believe that by using these geothermal sources the economic benefits of renewable energy will open the door to environmentally-sound initiatives such as job creation, lower energy costs and a shift to national sustainability in a water-constrained region.
TouchStone Resources is pursuing an exploration program for Active Geothermal Energy in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region and is also introducing Passive Geothermal Energy technology.
As a new technology it is complimentary to the existing national energy mix, which makes it attractive from an investment perspective.
Combining New Energy and New Water
Our belief is that because optima are scale dependent, if you allow different synergies to occur at different levels of scale, then new sustainable solutions arise. One such synergy is associated with the desalination of seawater using low grade geothermal energy. Typically such energy sources are inadequate for generating electricity, but they are viable for desalinating water. The technology has been demonstrated in Greece on the island of Kimolos through a project supported by the European Commission (THERMIE GE 438.94.HE). To read about this technology click here and here and here.
Aligning National Strategies
We believe that the current national energy/water/food strategies need to be more closely aligned.
Why?
It is not the volume of coal that defines energy limitations, but rather the availability of water to convert that coal into electricity.
It requires one kilogram of coal and two kilograms of water to generate one kilowatt hour of electricity, but this also emits a large volume of sulphur that either becomes acid mine drainage or acid rain, both of which have devastating effects in other parts of the economy.
Water is the limiting factor and not coal.
It is thus imperative that Energy/Water/Food strategies need to be braided together to support the socioeconomic development for the region. Part of our social entrepreneurship role is to introduce this complex debate into the public arena, while mobilizing financial resources to shift from our current way of doing things to a new way that we believe is inevitable if Southern Africa is to remain economically viable.
Corporations play a vital role in making this happen. We intend to be such a corporation and so we commit ourselves to that process.
Please join us on our journey as we shift from the way things are currently being done, to the way things should be done if we are to collectively have a brighter future, in a world in which social justice is the norm, because it is in such a world that we believe we would like to live.