Modern Mining November 2022

Coal is likely to prevail as the dominant base-load electrical power provider for the foreseeable future.

Clean Coal Technologies – quo vadis? By Alan M. Clegg: chairman, Shumba Energy and Spencer Eckstein – director, business development, Ukwazi Mining Studies Socrates famously stated: “The secret of change is to focus all your energy, not on fighting the old but on building the new.” Any coal fired power plant (CFPP) projects constructed today will use Clean Coal Technologies (CCT) to enable permitting. Old power stations, such as those we have in South Africa that were predominantly built in the 1970s, do not have CCT, nor do the newer ones built in the 2000s, namely the air-cooled Kusile and Medupi.

T he issues of Just Energy Transition and how to implement it are likely to generate further debate, and turn into a source of potential con flict between stakeholders, before becoming a reality in South Africa: not least because of gover nance failures and corruption scandals surrounding delivery on both sides of the aisle. In contrast, other SADC countries, like Botswana, are forging ahead with plans to deliver new CFPPs using CCT and based on their own significant Gl oba l l y, we have the COP27 Conference coming up in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, between 6-18 November 2022 and now, following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the exacerbated energy defi cit in the developed, western economies has become a con troversial energy delivery race. It has also highlighted the conflict between the ‘green lobby’ wanting to double down on the renewables proliferation thermal coal resources and economic growth requirements, which are driven by the availability of cheap energy.

strategy on one hand and the established, reli able fossil fuelled energy lobby on the other. The European energy crisis has also refocused atten tion on nuclear energy, which has been temporarily declared as a necessary evil and which has been allowed back into use, through sheer necessity. So why is coal an issue? Most mined thermal coal was created 200 – 300 million years ago from plant material that decayed and formed underground into carbon rich coal under very high heat and pressure. In South Africa, the bulk of our coal forms part of a particular geological feature referred to as the Karoo supergroup and is concentrated mostly in Mpumalanga. Coal derived-energy formed the basis of the industrial revolution (c1760-1820) and throughout the British Empire became the dominant global form of energy, which continues today. Coal contains a variety of chemicals such as sul phur, nitrogen and moisture, and when burned in a power station, produces carbon dioxide, sulphur dioxide, nitrous oxide and ash. When claims regarding coal emissions are made and causal connections are drawn between emis sions and climate change, its important for these claims to be evaluated objectively against the best

Burning coal to generate power impacts the environment negatively.

16  MODERN MINING  November 2022