By Lesedi Sibiya-Diplomatic Insider
Day 2 of the Joburg Indaba is underway, with CEO of Exxaro Resources ,Ben Magara, giving his insights on “Diversification as resilience”.
Magara started his address by highlighting four priorities that his company Exxaro aim to uphold when engaging in business such as; Safety striving for zero harm for their employees, assuring clients that Exxaro is reliable and making them feel trusted, ensuring that the tasks are also an enjoyable experience, and profitability stating that there is difficulty in achieving social objectives without making any money.
Magara also highlighted that Exxaro intends to double their renewable energy investments, as they aim to use their R80 billion capital.
“We are doubling our renewable energy business from 229 megawatts to 450 by 2027. That excites me to have a company that is very clear about its vision where we are growing renewable business and growing our transition network.” said Magara in his presentation.
Moses Madondo who is the CEO of Thungela explained that reliance on coal is imperative for human advancement and expressed that the world needs to focus on clean coal for greener energy and also stated that coal is still fundamental in growing economies .
“We believe that coal is required for energy resilience and for human advancement coal remains the cornerstone of meeting growing energy demand. It’s an affordable, reliable and abundant energy source. The world does need to create greener sources of energy, including clean coal.” said Madondo in his address.
Chief Commercial Officer of Menar, Ruan Nothangel, expressed that coal is severely important for South Africa and the world as a whole.
He expressed that South Africa needs to do more research and development regarding carbon capture technologies as they are able to capture 99% of the carbon emissions.
“We need to spend more R&D on carbon capture technologies. They can capture 99% of the carbon emissions. We need to start investing in CC at the power stations. Carbon taxing coal isn’t the answer, it just increases the price of energy” said Nothnagel.
Mike Teke who serves as Group Chief Executive for Seriti resources and the Chairman of Future Coal expressed that transitioning to renewable sources of energy does not undermine the need for coal and has emphasised that coal mining should continue to grow.
“It is not coal vs renewables. Coal mining will continue- we’re not selling any of our coal assets and the profits are being invested in renewable energy. We’re building 111 wind turbines plus some solar and battery storage which will generate 900MW” said Teke.