The date was December 2011. The place was Durban. The occasion was an Anglo American media conference led by the company’s then CEO Cynthia Carroll.The topic was the opportunity to use Anglo’s platinum group metals (PGMs) to generate clean hydrogen power and sustain hundreds of thousands of South African jobs.

A roundtable media discussion provided access to many PGM executives to answer questions. Carroll drew on an abundance of old and new research to champion the fuel cell’s cause at a function held by the World Business Council on Sustainable Development and the International Chamber of Commerce for the presidency of the United Nations climate change convention’s seventeenth Conference of the Parties (COP 17).

Carroll declared the window of opportunity to be “wide open” for South Africa to create “hundreds of thousands of new jobs” and simultaneously obtain a source of clean zero-emission electricity.

The think-tank put to work was the UK’s Carbon Trust, which found that hydrogen fuel cells had the potential to drive the development of a new industrial sector in South Africa and provide South Africa with the opportunity to become a major global green economy participant.

At the same time, Ballard of Canada, in the presence of South Africa’s then Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe, demonstrated the enabling power of PGMs in electrolysers and fuel cells.

Providing special insight was Anglo Platinum engineering head Krish Pillay, who outlined how PGM-catalysed electrolysers are able to provide the green hydrogen that PGM-catalysed fuel cells turn into clean electricity, and providing oversight was Ballard Power Systems director Karrim Kassam.

Between then and now, Ballard has been using zero-emission PGMs-catalysed proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cells to power buses, trucks, trains, ships, stationary power plants, and you name it.

It has been living out its vision of delivering PGMs-based hydrogen fuel cell power to help to shield Mother Earth from the vagaries of climate change to major effect and with great aplomb.

Since COP 17, this publication has been receiving 15 years of input from Ballard. In fact, its latest communique highlights the use of its hydrogen PEM fuel cells – and when you see PEM, see PGM – for the many data centres that are springing up across the globe because of their zero-emission advantage.

Also since then, Anglo Platinum has become Valterra Platinum, which reported in its 2025 annual reporting suite received by Engineering News & Mining Weekly on March 27 that “the hydrogen economy is set to be a broad-demand sector with strong growth, despite some short-term challenges, as global policy becomes more supportive”.

Shortly before that, on March 1, Sibanye-Stillwater CEO Dr Richard Stewart told the PGMs Industry Day: “I’m actually pretty bullish on hydrogen” and at the same event Implats CEO Nico Muller added: “I think hydrogen’s got the inside track.”

But can you imagine where South Africa would be now if the country had just kept pace with Ballard?

Even at that 2011 stage, many were convinced PEM presented a compelling case to power South Africa’s large taxi fleet with hydrogen in place of petrol.

Many were recalling how fuel-from-coal company Sasol began by having one Sasol pump at petrol stations owned by other companies.

Former Sasol CEO Peter Cox used to say to Engineering News & Mining Weekly that Sasol could repeat that by starting with a single hydrogen pump at each petrol station and get hydrogen mobility going.

Now, Northam Platinum CEO Paul Dunne, who is also president of Minerals Council South Africa, is drawing strong attention to China using Sasol-type grey hydrogen to power thousands of hydrogen trucks in China as an interim measure. The five-year target is to then advance to green hydrogen.

With the Middle East crisis lifting fuel prices to dizzy heights, many in South Africa are again pointing to the hydrogen opportunity.

Toyota tells Engineering News & Mining Weekly that modifying its taxis to run on hydrogen would result in the loss of one seat, which taxi owners are not keen to see happening.

But where there’s a will, there’s a way, particularly amid the taxi business facing serious fuel price rise.

“To secure the future of PGM demand, we must actively create it – through partnership, shared investment, and a wide portfolio approach that continually brings new applications into the pipeline,” Valterra Platinum, headed by CEO Craig Miller, outlined in a recent LinkedIn post.

“By combining Johnson Matthey’s industrial technology leadership with a growing base of aligned partner capital, we can fast-track impactful new PGM applications and help shape the demand of tomorrow,” the Valterra note added.