Modern Mining January 2024

COLUMNIST

The hidden (and not so hidden) injustice of coal By Dr Ross Harvey, director of research and programmes at Good Governance Africa (GGA) A new class action lawsuit being brought against Exarro puts the role of coal in our soci ety firmly in the spotlight. Depending how one measures it at any given time, South Africa

depends on coal for over 80 percent (or 42 GW) of its electricity needs. The national transmission grid is almost wholly configured to ingest coal-fired power from Mpumalanga. This explains why the roughly 6 GW of renewable energy potentially available from the last bid window (6) of the Renewable Energy Independent Power Procurement Programme (REIPPP) has not come onstream. Investments in grid upgrading are essentially non-existent. There are insufficient ingestion points in the regions produc ing complementary wind and solar power (Northern Cape and Eastern Cape). Six GW would have allevi ated roughly 30% of the current 20 GW deficit and push the electricity availability factor back up to manageable, if not acceptable, levels. Unless things change rapidly in the policy landscape, we are stuck with coal for the foreseeable future. This raises a serious conundrum in the context of climate change and talk of a ‘just energy transition’, especially with climate change negotiations at COP28 in Dubai in November/December 2023. On one hand, those who see justice primarily in terms of pro-poor industrialisation often seem tempted to argue that coal is just a necessary evil on the road to prosperity. The fact that South Africa is the 14th highest emitter of carbon diox ide in the world is a flash in the pan compared to emissions from China and the US combined. Moreover, it is hardly comparable to the rich world’s

Dr Ross Harvey, director of research and programmes at GGA.

The national transmission grid is almost wholly configured to ingest coal-fired power from Mpumalanga. consumption-driven ecological footprint. Without electricity, industrialisation is not possible. As it is, South Africa, along with the rest of southern Africa, is experiencing deindustrialisation. In other words, we are seeing a reduction in manufacturing value-add, and a declining share of employment in manufacturing sectors. This is happening earlier, and at lower per capita income levels, than it did with our industrialised counterparts. The latter moved out of manufacturing into high value-add services once manufacturing had generated broad-based wealth. Premature deindustrialisation, in a nutshell, relegates a country to perpetual middle-to-low income status and high levels of inequality. Coal-fired power, in this argument, is a driver of ‘re-industrialisation’ that will create wealth. We can worry about emissions later – the West, China and India must reduce emissions while we industrialise, as this is only fair. Moreover, the coal mining industry supports thousands of relatively well-paid jobs. Without that income, in a context of serial structural unemployment at around 40%, how could we possibly think of shutting down coal and leaving it in the ground? On the other hand, those of us who take a more nuanced view of justice object to the above argu ment along the following lines: We accept that re-industrialisation is a devel opment imperative. However, it is too simplistic to argue that coal is a necessary evil to accomplish that end. The ends do not justify the means. Mining coal carries extensive negative externalities that still go unaccounted for. Negative externalities are the divergence between social costs and private returns. Coal mining (and burning) carries per haps the most intensive social and environmental

South Africa depends on coal for over 80% of its electricity needs.

58  MODERN MINING  January 2024