As part of the push for net zero in Africa there is dwindling support from financial institutions and governments for coal projects. South Africa's Integrated Resource Plan sets out a scheme to decommission 10,000 MW of coal-fired plants and replace it with gas and renewables. A multi-billion dollar just energy transition partnership JETP is in place, backed by wealthy western states, to help with the transition, even after US President Donald Trump pulled loans for the project.
Despite this, mining multi-millionaire Tim Tebeila believes dirty coal is still top of the South African energy heap. "Coal is here to stay for more than 100 years. This is a fact: yes, it will not die anytime soon. A lot of industry depends on coal. The steel industry here relies on coal. There is not any green energy that can feed a furnace," says Tebeila.
This year Tebeila is putting his money where his mouth is. He has reopened his coal mining operation in the massive Waterberg coalfield in the northern Limpopo province of South Africa - a largely untapped resource with an estimated 30bn tonnes of coal, only some of which is controlled by Tebeila enough to last the country for up to 50 years.
Feeding South Africa's coal addictionTebeila mothballed his Waterberg coal-mining operation about three years ago, because of weak coal prices and problems with the railway lines both to the power stations and to the Richards Bay Coal Terminal, the export hub on the KwaZulu-Natal coast. He owns a coal washing plant in Mpumalanga and mines on eight properties, covering 11,000 hectares, with an estimated 5bn tonnes in reserves in the Waterberg.
But this year Tebeila's 800 workers began mining 150,000 tonnes per-month from the Waterberg, as the railway problems ebbed and the opportunities flowed. The best of it is sold as coking coal to steel furnaces: in March a government-owned investor pumped 92m into ArcelorMittal South Africa to keep its steel operations alive in the country. About a third goes for export, priced in US dollars the rest is