drs. JF (Fred) Goede

Fred Goede worked for 25 years in the petroleum, chemicals, energy and mining sectors, mainly on operations and projects in Southern Africa and projects in the Middle East, North America and Europe for divisions of Sasol (Pty) Ltd. His early career focussed on research and development, before he branched into operations support and corporate leadership roles. Fred worked for Sasol Limited where he developed Sasol’s responses to the sustainable development agenda. As General Manager Health and Environment, he had to integrate energy, environment, climate change, and safety, health and sustainability objectives into both operations and corporate management. He provided strategic direction and governance, set targets for emission and waste reduction, developed climate response strategies and implemented global roll-out plans for the organisation. He reported performance and highlighted risks and responses on a routine basis to boards, shareholders (Form 20F for the NYSE listing and JSE) and public forums and was a major contributor to the sustainable development report of Sasol since 1996, that received multiple awards.

He provided key inputs in the positioning of coal-to-liquids technology in a climate and water constrained world, positioned the new gas-to-liquids in the environmental context in the 1990’s and was instrumental in the design of a new energy business unit focussed on alternative energy. He presented papers at many of the world’s energy, climate, gas and oil conferences, in addition to the United Nations international conferences on sustainability, chemicals and climate change and university postgraduate programs. A registered natural scientist for more than 20 years, Fred contributed as a lead author to the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) from 2002 until 2006 and received recognition for his contribution to the Nobel Peace prize in 2007.

When his position as General Manager for Environment and Health became obsolete in 2014 following company restructuring, he decided to leave Sasol and further pursue opportunities in environmental leadership. In 2015 he registered Southern Cross Environmental (Pty) Ltd to manage projects on climate change, air quality, water, waste and energy. He continues to provide specialist support to governments and businesses, assisting with risk management and compliance challenges related to environment and sustainable development. He contributed to public and private projects related to Climate change adaptation (2014), National Framework for Climate Services (2016) and Cost-benefit analyses of Air Quality in South Africa (2017).

His educational passion found a permanent home in the Centre for Applied Risk Management at the North-West University where he lectures to part-time M.Com students in Johannesburg in the Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences.