South Africa’s reliance on coal-generated electricity will be reduced over the next ten years, but coal will continue to play a central role in the mineral resources sector.According to Gwede Mantashe, Minister of Mineral Resources and Energy, the Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) – the country’s blueprint for long-term electricity generation – provides for a more diversified energy mix where coal in future will play a far lesser role than at present, but, he said, coal would remain integral.Indicating that there was no way one could just ignore the vast amount of coal available in South Africa and its neighbouring states, Mantashe said the idea was to see coal only responsible for about 60% of electricity generation by 2030.He said new licences for coal mining had been granted in the past year while the Council for Geoscience (C G S) w a s looking at frontier coalfields and the establishment of additional generation capacity in support of carbon capture storage and utilisation (CCSU).“In an effort to increase energy efficiency, the CGS will further investigate the potential of carbon utilisation in contributing to enhanced geothermal energy generation and improved extraction of coal-bed methane.” The move would be to “clean coal” rather than no coal, he said.Around the world major coal players have been disinvesting from coal assets as the world moves to a cleaner, greener environment. In South Africa coal exports have seen very little growth in recent years, not budging from the current 75 million tons per annum mark for years.According to Henk Langenhoven, chief economist of the Mining Council South Africa, the potential does exist to increase this to around 110 million tons.Coal was also still the largest component of mining by sales value for the country. An average increase of 14.1% was seen in the coal price during 2019, but the average mix of volumes remained the same.At the annual Investing in African Mining Indaba, recently held in Cape Town, several coal experts reiterated that South Africa needed to improve its logistics and streamline the rail networks if it wanted to benefit from coal in the future.Competition was also on the increase. Already a 390-million-tonne coal project was under development by Minergy in Botswana, a country that wants to become a key player in the coal sector in southern Africa.Botswana has previously stated that while its initial focus will be on domestic production, exports are very much a part of the bigger picture. Plans for the Mmamabula-Lephalale coal railway line are in place and construction is on course to start in 2021. This would establish a higher-capacity, heavy-duty coal export line that would move the commodity out of the landlocked country to ports in South Africa.
