Mining Indaba: At the Crossroads | Coal, Capital and Energy Equity in Africa

As global energy priorities shift, coal is re-entering the conversation in Africa - raising complex questions around investment, sustainability and energy equity. In this episode, we discuss whether renewed coal investment is real, what ‘clean coal’ means in practice, and how coal may fit within Just Energy Transition commitments.

Speakers include:

• Assheton Stewart Carter I Executive Chair and Founder at TDi Sustainability
• Paul Baruya | Director of Strategy and Sustainability at FutureCoal

Since joining FutureCoal in 2022, Paul has led work on the role of advanced coal technologies in a carbon-neutral future and the strategic importance of coal in developing economies. Paul’s expertise spans energy-system modelling and market analysis. 

This episode is part of the TDi Sustainability special series of podcasts produced for the Mining Indaba event that will take place in Cape Town between 9th – 12th February 2026. Find out more about the event>

Transcript

Welcome to the Suits & Boots Mining Indaba 2026 Series

Assheton Stewart Carter 0:09

Hello and welcome to this special edition of Suits and Boots, the TDI Sustainability Podcast Series in conjunction with the Investing in African Mining in Daba. In this series, speakers at the 2026 Mining Indaba event discuss some of the key themes that will be covered at that conference. I'm Assheton Stewart Carter, Executive Chair at TDI Sustainability.

Episode Theme: Coal’s Re-emergence, Investment, and Energy Equity

Assheton Stewart Carter 0:35

And joining me for today's discussion is Paul Baruya, who is the director of strategy and sustainability

Introducing Paul Baruya (Future Coal)

Assheton Stewart Carter 0:43

at Future Coal, about which we'll hear a little more later. But first, a big welcome, Paul.

Paul Baruya 0:51

Thank you, Ashen. Pleasure to be here.

Assheton Stewart Carter 0:53

So it's going to energy priority shift. Coal is re-entering the conversation in Africa, or perhaps it's never left that conversation, and raises complex questions around investment, sustainability, and energy equity. So in this episode, Paul, we're going to discuss whether renewed coal investment is real, what clean coal means in practice, and how coal may fit within just energy transition commitments. But to start, Paul, could you tell us a little bit about Future Coal and about your journey to your position at Future Coal?

What is Future Coal? (World Coal Association rebrand + broader value chain)

Speaker 1:28

Of course. Future Coal is actually what we're formerly known as the World Coal Association. We rebranded back in 2023. Future Coal's been going on for if so if you like, the actual history of Future Coal is actually much longer than the brand suggests. And where we used to be a industry association for the mining, coal mining sector, we felt that we had to broaden and unite the entire value chain. So really it was to extend that conversation and extend our advocacy to beyond just mining, but to also

Paul’s Journey: Energy policy, clean coal tech, forecasting, and consultancy

Speaker 2:05

embrace the end users as well, such as the power utilities, engaging with the steel sector, engaging with the cement sector, and all the others, and all the innovators who are producing all these new fantastic minerals and uh materials at universities around the world using coal. So we really wanted to bring that to the fore and really increase the consciousness of the value, the strategic value of coal today as well as in the past, but also where we might see this value going in the future. And um, yeah, no, it's really exciting. So my own background really comes from um an energy policy uh master's degree from Imperial College in London. And that's where I got inspired by clean coal technology. Now I know the word clean coal uh can grate some people, but really that's what it was called. And that that inspired me, and that was back in the 1990s, and then I've got also had a background in um the IEA clean coal technology, which was known back then, which then evolved into the um Center for Sustainable Carbon, where I learned about the trends for all these new coal innovations and coal market directions. And so it was really exciting to see the um the whole plethora of solutions uh for coal. But I've also had a background in environmental technology as well, sorry, environmental consultancy. Um, and that was with one of the UK's largest uh consultancy firms where I looked actually uh created the methodology to create CO2 allowance allocations to um UK industry. Um, and I also spent several years in energy forecasting. So I used to look at global coal, gas, oil, and prices as well and all power generation trends. So really I've I really enjoyed the multi-fuel side of um analysing the sort of the global patterns and trying to understand how the world of energy works, and that really drove me to that. And what brought me to future coal was to continue that work, but realizing that really we need to find fossil fuel solutions, and that's something we'll talk about a bit later, and that's where the advocacy work uh really is coming from in Future Coal, and uh it's called sustainable coal stewardship. But we can describe that a little later.

“Coal Misconceptions”: Why the narrative is shifting

Assheton Stewart Carter 4:22

That's great, and that's um a fascinating journey, and clearly you have a very um appropriate and you're very well qualified, uh very well-qualified resume for the job. Um on you you mentioned a little bit there, and on the Future Coal website, it talks, I think, about addressing the misconceptions around coal. And you know, I think it's fair to say coal's had a bad rap from whether it's kind of human rights associated with coal mining or how it's burned and what's the contribution to um to the climate change or the negative effects of climate change. But you know, what I think you're bringing up is this isn't really the way to be looking at coal at all. So from your vantage point, the vantage point of future coal, how would you describe the current global conversation around coal and how has that changed and where is it heading now?

From phase-out rhetoric to “coal realism” and today’s operating standards

Paul Baruya 5:15

Yeah, I think it's had a bad rap, and there is some justification behind it because maybe the practices in the 20th century uh weren't um up to modern ESG standards, and also that goes with the end users. But you know, things have changed and things have moved on, and I think what we see in the West is not what we see uh in terms of coal in the past. Um, for instance, one's image uh based in London, you know, one's image of uh of the coal industry is somewhat different to the way it's operating in Asia today, for instance. But what we have now seen um very recently is this conversation um leading us towards a more modern uh coal realism. The fact that, not the fact that it's not gonna go away, it's always gonna be there,

Energy security as national security: geopolitics, resilience, and coal’s role

Paul Baruya 6:05

but rather it's it is here today. So, how can we make today's practice and tomorrow's practice more sustainable? And we're actually seeing those solutions emerging all the all around the world, and it's really exciting to see that. Um, the debate has also shifted from just phasing out coal, which has obviously been the core since 2015, to actually understanding energy security. And since COVID and since um the uh the the Russians' energy sanctions and all the geopolitical uh tensions um associated with everything going around the world, uh, I think we're now seeing nations and cultures looking inward and thinking, how do we protect ourselves in terms of energy security? Because energy security leads to national security. And so it's all about building resilience within the economy. And where coal exists today and where it hasn't been phased out, it's still actually being reassessed now. And we're seeing that in India, China, um, Asia, Africa, and Australia, and of course the United States. Now, Indian China isn't really going through quite as rapid pace of transition, nor is Southeast Asia. Um, but they are going through a transition nonetheless. But what they're not doing is immediately jumping on the bandwagon to phase out coal anytime soon.

Should coal be treated as a “critical mineral”? (and what “critical” means)

Assheton Stewart Carter 7:29

Yes, thank you for those reflections on coal in the context of national sustainable development, and I'll come back to that in a minute. But panning out a little bit to the global discourse, you know, if you're not talking about artificial intelligence at a dinner party nowadays, you're talking about critical minerals, should coal be on one of these critical minerals lists?

Paul Baruya 7:53

Well, in some respects it is. Um, coke and coal, which as a coal is used for processes rather than for combustion, um, is considered a critical mineral, rather a critical raw material in many parts of the world. South Africa is one, um, the US see it as. Even

Coal’s economic role: steel, cement, electricity, and grid stability

Paul Baruya 8:10

Europe um sees cocaine coal, pardon me, as a critical raw material, and it is formally on their list. But I think traditionally, when we think of critical minerals, we think of all the ones that go in electronics and electric motors, as you say, um, rightly, AI, but also the critical minerals that are needed to um supply uh the solar and wind industry with what they need in order to operate, and even coal and gas plants still need them. But the quantities required for uh wind and solar for the sort of trajectory we're seeing is absolutely huge. So when we now turn to the question of shouldn't coal be a critical mineral, well, no fossil fuels are actually considered critical uh critical minerals or critical materials, as in thermal coal um for power generation or for cement for the cement sector, it's generally excluded. So when we talk about criticality, let's now sort of re-envisage the question and think, well, what would happen if you strip thermal coal from the world economy? Would you suddenly reach a sort of a catastrophic point of you know, sort of market collapses and things like that? Well, when you consider that 70% of world steel is produced from uh coking coal, when you think that cement, almost 80% of cement requires coal uh for its production, 30% of global electricity comes from coal, admittedly, geographically over in Asia. Um, but also coal plays an absolutely vital role in regions like Africa, where it acts as not only a core source of um electricity, particularly in South Africa, but it also has a tempering effect on the massive volatility one can see historically in the gas and oil markets, and also has a tempering effect on the volatility of intermittent renewable energies on the grid system. So it has, although it seems to be a marginal fuel in the eyes of particularly in the eyes of the Westerners, um, it is still an absolutely vital material. And so I think the answer to the question is yes, it is critical, um, as is gas in many parts of the world, as is oil in many parts of the world, but it's just all about perception and what do we see as critical? Does it have an impact on um industry? Does it have an effect on the achieving developments in crucial regions of the world? Um, if I give you an example, that China brought 600 million people out of poverty, 600 million since the late 20th century. That's about the amount of people that actually in energy poverty today. And that was done with coal as a key underpinning of its economy and economic development. Now imagine if you then took coal out of um South Africa, you're not only going to strip South Africa of an absolutely vital fuel for not only for gasification, um, for chemicals and fertilizers and other productions like that, but you've obviously got your power generation. But imagine you then suddenly um took that from the Southern African power pool. All of your members who rely on uh coal as a marginal fuel at least, and particularly when there are hydro droughts, they're all going to suffer. The entire region's going to feel a massive, massive pinch. It's a vital part of all the economies in order to enable them to keep their economic activities going. So one could argue if coal is not a critical mineral, it's definitely a critical resource for the region.

Steel’s pathway: blast furnaces vs EAF vs hydrogen (and the constraints)

Assheton Stewart Carter 11:43

Just to unpack that a little bit more, just I've got it clear in my head. So the coking coal, which some people call steelmaking coal, um is really, I think, is a critical input to the clean energy transition. That's how people normally phrase the um critical minerals, because it's needed for this infrastructure material and for casings and for um wind turbines and pretty much everything else. Um we're gonna hear a little bit about kind of green coal. Now, do we think could you get some facts about um how coking coal, steel making coal will persist? I went to a meeting at the Austrian embassy a couple of weeks ago in London, and they're there talking about the um the the the green steel there and the advent not just of uh furnaces but also hydrogen as well in the system. But just give us a little idea about uh what is needed for um steel going forward, and then on the thermal side, which isn't useful for steelmaking, how that's important and global, just some facts and figures would be really useful.

Paul Baruya 12:52

Sure. Well, at the moment, roughly 70% of the um uh world steel uh production comes from blast furnaces, and so that is primarily using uh cocon and iron ore. Now the the notion that these are going to transition to electricity and um to hydrogen-based is an interesting one. Now, the electric art furnace, the EAF process, which effectively uses electrodes and uh uses, as as the name suggests, electricity to um to produce steel, relies almost entirely on scrap steel. So you've got a secondary market of scrap metal that needs to feed into it. So the most of the sort of iron ore um requirements um then isn't needed. But then what you do need is you need a sophisticated and an absolutely abundant uh scrap steel source. Um it's not it's not always that straightforward to transition over. The last time I looked at the market, the electric car furnaces also were of a much smaller scale, which made them actually more popular if you look at the numbers because they were smaller scale, they could be situated in more places. So they look apparently as though um it's really the way to go forward, but um, there are still ramifications regarding where do you get the uh raw materials for it. Also, of course, you need affordable electricity. So, where you may have abundant hydro or uh maybe nuclear power, that's great. Um, where you've got an abundance of uh fossil fuel-based thermal power generation, that works really, really well, also. Um, so there are so many other factors involved in uh the electric process. The hydrogen process is also interesting. The source of the hydrogen is uh a big question. When one has conversations in Europe, it's always about uh green hydrogen, which um I think it's coming from a good place. And you know, I'm not gonna contest that. But all that hydrogen right now is um coming. If you want to get it from wind and solar, you are looking at several multiples the cost of the current source of hydrogen, which is actually natural gas and a little bit of coal, and um much of that being produced in uh China. So there is a cost factor with the hydrogen. Um and also um somebody spoke at a meeting a few years ago, and they were saying that if you converted all of the steelmaking capabilities in Europe to um hydrogen, you would need nearly all the electricity in Europe to create the hydrogen using the electrolysis process um just to replace the steel. So, you know, that kind of gives you some perspective on um the challenges involved. That's not to say that there isn't a way forward. Um, there's definitely so much uh investment going into those and so much innovation going into those. Um, the key thing is is where how do you make hydrogen a lot cheaper? Um and on the uh thermal coal question, uh pardon me, roughly 30% of world um electricity generation uh comes still comes from coal. And going back to your comment about the life cycle, not only is the coal-based steel absolutely vital to make affordable um steel for wind turbines

Renewables’ material intensity and the scale of minerals required

Paul Baruya 16:10

and so on and so forth, um you also need the affordable electricity as well to man to really run those manufacturing plants in China to produce the solar panels. Uh, not so much as the panels as themselves, but to produce the solar um like the modules and the um the purification of the silicon, as well as all the critical minerals that are going in to produce the abundant electric motors, uh rather generators that sit inside the Ness L's of the uh wind turbines at the top. Um, if I gave you an idea that roughly um the amount to produce uh to produce a megawatt of installed capacity for wind and solar, you need roughly three to six times more critical minerals than you do for uh building a megawatt of a gas plant or a coal plant. So, you know, the scale of um of what we need is is absolutely gigantic. And in terms of coal and power, well, coal is still underpinning a lot of electricity markets and grids around the world. The US most recently in the last winter uh relied on coal for many of the grids. Um, up to 40% of the electricity came from uh coal at the most crucial times when there was very little wind, solar, and gas available and there was peak demand. So we're seeing um this uh not so much as a resurgence, but a recognition that coal is a absolutely necessary part of the um of grid security. In Australia, we're seeing some coal plants which were which were earmarked for closure, imminent closure, which will have their lives extended by a few years. Um so you know, we're seeing starting to see around the world um some need for coal still. I think there are some countries in Europe which are on the cusp, but they are kind of legally bound by much, much tighter regulations in terms of their targets. So it's a lot harder for them to try and keep um life extensions going.

Coal in development contexts: Africa, Indonesia, and “transition realities”

Assheton Stewart Carter 18:17

That's great, yes, and thanks. And as as always, these discussions on sustainable development and industrialization are about trade-offs, and I guess that's just a message we need to keep on repeating for policymakers and the public that there are trade-offs, and I always think our job is to try and reduce those trade-offs, so maximise the benefits and reduce the um reduce the negative, um, the adverse impacts. And to that, now perhaps we can just focus a little bit on those countries, and you have touched on this, but um I really want to explore how important is coal for some of these countries in the region. And two things come to mind. One, we're doing some work with a state bank in Indonesia, and interesting that work we're doing is just transition, and of course, that is about transitioning um out of coal in the case of Indonesia, and how do you manage that impact? And then it's on this podcast last week we had an activist from um from Wangi in Zimbabwe. Um, and what he's activating for is more in the transition in, which is they realize that in Zimbabwe coal is very much there to stay, and there aren't many options for other sources of power, and uh he kind of harks back to better days in Owangi where there were when there was more prosperity and figuring out how his community become more involved. So how do you see coal being part of the development picture in some of these African countries and what's the role of future coal?

Paul Baruya 19:53

Well, for Africa to I think Africa's gonna have to figure out, and I think it's already made up its mind which um energy transition model it would like to follow. I I think Europe has proven that it's a lot more difficult than the models uh, you know, the like the net zero models might suggest. Um, the countries like Indonesia, as a model, is an interesting one that you bring it up because uh they, of course, have a massive critical uh mineral industry in their nickel uh industry. And for nickel smelting, they need a lot of abundant affordable energy, and they are actually running coal-fired power stations to run those smelters. Um, so they need to balance the business case for being part of the critical mineral supply chain with phasing out coal. So it's gonna be a that that's a tricky one. Um, I've actually done some work on reducing emissions in Indonesia as well in a previous role. And there are ways that they can improve stations, but I think a disappearance of coal-fied power with a their abundance of a domestic resource, something very common with sub-Saharan Africa. Um, their ever increasing or uh fleet as in terms of performance and the sort of modernity of their power stations. I mean, Vietnam's got far more advanced power stations uh in terms of coal-fied power than the UK has ever seen. Uh, so you know, they uh they are sitting on a very young coal fleet, so it's going to be around for several decades. In contrast, you've got the sub-Saharan African fleet, which is older. And so, you know, what the argument is what can we do with those? And future Cold role will be to try and facilitate uh uh an exploration of the possible solutions that Africa can turn to. And that's just not looking at their power generation, but it's also looking at the mining solutions, the logistics solutions. This is something that we're on the learning curve uh ourselves, but we are getting there, you know. Know very, very quickly, and what we're seeing is there is scope to improve and clean up and make uh more emission-friendly coal-fired power technologies. You can do it with your existing plants. Um, you have the infrastructure, you've got the grid, you've got the logistics all in place. Um, you've got the rail, you've got the truck routes, um, everything's there. So why uh make that disappear overnight? It's it's all about the solutions are there. So we think that Asia has been spearheading high-efficiency power generation, for instance, for well, for decades now, actually. Japan, China, India's going there. Um, and again, we're seeing power stations that we've never seen in the UK and in many other parts of Europe as well, that are so clean. Uh, some of them are cleaner than gas turbines. And so there's no reason why um sub-Saharan Africa can't maintain its coal logistics and its infrastructure, but add to that um renewables, add to that perhaps gas technologies, but at the same time modernize its uh its coal infrastructure as well. There's there are so many solutions, and it's about being inventive, it's about being creative. You don't have to follow the European route.

Investment landscape: who’s funding coal now, and what’s changing?

Assheton Stewart Carter 23:20

And for that to happen, it needs investment, of course. And as a kind of an outsider and you just read the headlines of newspapers, yeah, I guess you could be forgiven to believe that the pressure to have investors um opt out of coal or divest is as strong as ever. But as you pointed out, coal is still central to many economies. How are investors responding? And who who are the new investors who are investing into this? I guess the maintenance of a cleaner um industry in coal.

Paul Baruya 23:55

Well, yeah, the traditional investors, especially the multilateral development banks, they had they they had their fingers burned. Um I won't I won't go down that that alley. Uh, I think South Africa's uh you know uh has has experienced that, um, such as you know, the World Bank funding of of power stations. So what's happened is yeah, we've seen a like a symbolic um drift uh away from thermal coal investments, not the same drift away from coke and coal investments. That's what's quite interesting, even amongst Western banks, but there is um definitely this um policy uh shift. In fact, many of these policy announcements from uh investors in fact came from investors that probably didn't have a very strong presence in the coal value chain anyway. So, you know, many of these may have been um, you know, just reputational. Um so it is difficult, especially for the um smaller operators uh amongst the African uh uh mining community where they're seeing you know more expensive lending conditions. It is it is getting harder. I'm hearing that from the industry. Um not many years ago, though, the Chinese were lending to uh coal power stations um and uh to mining operations at a very favorable rates and extremely favorable terms, um, with you know very few of the loopholes or rather the holes to jump through uh that um that that your coal operators would need to do, especially amongst uh Western investors. So it whether we see a re-emergence of um Asian investment coming into Africa will very much depend on um what their lending policies are. Now, Japan is tied to the OECD, so their OECD lending policies, I'll be honest, is a bit on the biased side uh under the guidance rules on on funding uh coal projects. But the Chinese also, in their Belt and Road, uh their Belt and Road uh program also did a slight pullback on new coal investments. But what we haven't seen is a clear indication that they're saying no to investing in sustainable coal. Um stewardship is what we call in future coal. It's it's rather that modernization I was talking about. It's about emissions solutions, it's about perhaps uh decarbonising and um uh the mining sector as well as um other things like you know, land rehabilitation, um, emissions reductions at the power stations, um, and effectively uh responsible coal consumption and production. So we we we think that there is a lot of interest out there. It's about communicating the solutions and it's about still lending within their rules, but it's it's it will also be compatible with a much more sustainable pathway for um for some sub-Saharan African coal. Um it's tricky. In terms of the new funders, uh, you this is a question you really need to ask my CEO because she's had a lot of conversations, um, confidential ones, with some very, very large um international global finance houses, and they've been knocking on her door asking about where uh coal investment's gonna head. So that is definitely a turning point. Um, we are seeing a difference in a difference in sentiments. Um, there's a lot more interest in carbon capture and storage, so decarbonising coal projects. Um people are saying that they're not averse to lending to that. It's about, again, getting the confidence, um, being, you know, getting the uh getting the risk reductions and understanding the risks of carbon capture and storage and how to reduce them, of which there are many solutions, which we're also seen coming out of Europe as well as elsewhere. And uh yeah, so with you know, there's a lot of a lot of um private lenders, a lot of private equity that wants to get involved. Um there are people out there who are looking to who are quite freely admitting that they're willing to lend to coal. So there was a that was my doorbell going, so I don't know if the sound is uh and my dogs are barking.

ESG standards: tightening rules, trade-offs, and practicality

Assheton Stewart Carter 28:19

I think you're good. So one thing you mentioned there, and and I I I can't agree more that the you're seeing more and more uh Chinese investment, especially in the geopolitics of today, where China's, I guess, figuring out what its role is on the global stage. Um, but you also mentioned that they have fewer um conditions or loopholes that you have to um jump through to get their investment. Does that include or um uh social safeguards and ESG standards? Or do you think those are now becoming more of a standard within the industry?

Paul Baruya 28:54

That's a good question. Um I think there are reports stating that there are uh looser terms, as in um the Chinese would give back when I did the research back in the 2000s, uh mid-2000s, that they would give credit on much better terms. And it in fact it was more the other way around where Western investors might look at the um, for instance, the human rights um standards of a certain country where China wouldn't judge a nation on those terms, it would go by a project-by-project basis, the merits and the mutual benefits um of the uh respective partners. But ESG is definitely elevating, and that is definitely a way that is becoming standard practice, and it if it hasn't already, it is standard practice today. And I'm seeing that amongst future call members as well. Um, you know, they're very careful practitioners in terms of safety and performance and uh environment as well. So these are all becoming standard practice. What's interesting is um Europe, for instance, they are going to explore some much more stringent rules on uh ESG regarding um chemical safety in uh critical mineral refining. And so there is a possibility that critical mining in Europe is not going to happen, nowhere near at the pace that their net zero pathways are demanding uh for those reasons. So on the ESG question, um one has to say how how a stricter ESG standards uh do you need to have to a point where suddenly you lose that pathway to net zero and to for the critical mineral supply chain? Um is it I think do you want everything everywhere all at once? I think it's a term that I've seen somewhere. And um this is something that uh the CEO, future Col Michelle Manook, will be discussing in much greater detail in uh at the in DABA.

Assheton Stewart Carter 31:01

That's great. Uh look forward to hearing her presentation. I've got time, I think, for one more substantive topic, um, which is clean coal. And some would, as you said, consider that to be an oxymoron. But tell us a little bit about clean coal and um what that means and what future coal is doing to promote it.

Paul Baruya 31:21

Sure. Well, yes, clean coal certainly does sound like an oxymoron. It's not a term actually that we use, I'll be honest. Um, it's in fact clean energy is a tricky one because as long as there is a human footprint on the natural environment, there is no such thing as green or clean. So we can look at everything and look at it um critically. We can make coal cleaner, we can definitely do that from cradle to grave. Uh, we can make mining practices uh responsible so that what is um extracted and dug is then restored um to a natural habitat, sometimes even better than it was before.

What “cleaner coal” means in practice: pollution controls + CCS + rehab

Paul Baruya 32:01

And I've visited many uh former mine sites where and you know it's quite staggering. You'd never know there was a mine there, uh, whether it'd be North America or Australia, um, and even many parts of Europe as well. And so the clean coal technology is a really interesting, or rather cleaner coal technology, or what we call sustainable coal, is is the way forward to really minimize the impacts, not just environmental, not just emissions, because the technology is there. We can reduce emissions by uh up to 99%. Um, particulate matter, one of the key key pollutants for respiratory um problems in many parts of the world, um, as a result of other crop burning, road transport, and coal-fired power and any fossil fuel use. Uh, we can reduce that by 99.99%. You know, the technology's been around for decades. Sulfur dioxides and acid rain um uh components that can be reduced by 95 to 99 percent. Um, NOx can be reduced by well over 80 to 90 percent. So we know that we can create those emission reductions. CO2, well, we know that we can get it anywhere between 85 and 99 percent reduction, depending on which technique you use and how you how you adopt it. But carbon capture and storage um has been proven in the gas industry since the 1970s. In fact, I believe it was um a process that was uh innovated in the early 1900s. So it's actually working around the world and it's been proven. The Chinese right now are building and operating CCS plants um on a coal-fired power station and hoping to capture one and a half million tons of CO2 every year. So these are really exciting ways forward, and the Chinese are also ensuring that this is an exportable technology. They're not making sure, they're not just designing it just so it fits onto Chinese power plants. Um, so you know, this there's some really, really exciting avenues. And um, so effectively, sustainable, responsible coal is really what we're talking about is whatever we did in the past and whatever we're doing today, let's make sure that the way we exploit coal or any natural resource, including gas, oil, all the critical minerals needed for the renewable energies is done responsibly, it's done to the highest possible standard. But also it has to be balanced with the acceleration and pace we need to try and meet those climate targets as well. And when we think that 80% of global energy right now is come still comes from fossil fuels and has remained almost unchanged since the 1990s, now I think we're seeing, going back to actually your first question, we're seeing signals that the solutions have to be fossil related. They have to be fossil fuel solutions alongside nuclear, alongside renewables. Otherwise, we're just not going to meet those goals that we're all aspiring for.

Defining success: “keeping the lights on” as the invisible outcome

Assheton Stewart Carter 35:04

Yeah, so we can be ambitious, but we've also got to get real on some of these things and figure out how we can apply technology and our ample innovation to set things on the right path. Um, look, it's been a real pleasure talking to you, Paul. Thanks very much. You're obviously extremely knowledgeable about this and just the right person in the right job. Maybe I could finish on a question about the about the future. Maybe two questions, in fact. One is looking ahead, you know, five years or so in success, what would success be in your, which I have to say quite a difficult task, to change points of view and perceptions about coal? Where do you what do you hope to guess? And then because we're going into the Indaba and Africa in particular, how do you hope that African nations will um be benefiting from coal in the next five or ten years?

Paul Baruya 35:58

That that's a question which may have an an answer that people will think well uh that because really success will come from metrics and outcomes. And do you know you may not see the successes of a um a modern clean and a cleaner uh pathway for coal. And I'll tell you why. If you keep the lights on, nobody notices. Um, for instance, in the United States recently, where um effectively compared to Storm Ure back in 2021 when there was a you know, there was a there were blackouts and there was catastrophes, this time round, there wasn't the same problems. There was some wind power coming out, by the way, but coal actually stepped up. Okay, it kept the lights on, it enabled society, enabled commerce, enabled households to function almost as normal. Obviously, what was going on outside was quite something. But you won't notice when when your normal life actually means you've got electrons coming through and powering your laptop and charging your phone and uh powering your appliances. Um, and so it's going to be an invisible reward, almost an invisible outcome. And you won't, and hopefully, what maybe in five years' time you'll see um less risk, almost no risk, let's hope, of um of any form of any chance of load shedding. And and it will become part and parcel. You won't have to think about when or where you know you can uh you know activate your Wi-Fi in in sub Saharan Africa. Um miners and um industrial processes won't have to think about uh you know where the next kilowatt hour, megawatt, gigawatt hour uh is going to be available for them to respond to their markets and respond to their customers. So I think hopefully what you'll feel in five years' time is it will business as usual will not feel like business as usual today. It will be more productive, um, it will be more comfortable, um, and it will be cleaner as well. I think um, you know, if with with tweaks and investments and ongoing investments in improving the uh coal value chain, uh you'll see improvements all the way down the line.

Closing thanks + Mining Indaba invitation

Assheton Stewart Carter 38:23

That's great. And yeah, I think that's an end a good message to end on. This is about kind of energy security, which we do take for granted. So I think you're right to talk about what we feel because we don't often think about where our energy comes from. Um and for sure coal is going to be continue to be important in many countries, if not across the world. Thank you once again to our speaker, Paul Baruya, for joining us today. To our listeners, please check out the rest of the special series of Mining Indaba podcasts on the TDI Suits and Boots Podcast channel. I look forward to seeing you all next week at the Mining Indaba event, where you can hear more from Paul and his CEO, Michelle, and his future colleagues on this topic. I'm Assheton Carter, and thank you for listening.