As our planet burns, the coal sector is reinventing itself — and its future

The wind turbines tower 130m over the surrounding maize fields, hulking giants of a new industrial age electrified by the cleansing power of renewable energy. 

Erected near the Mpumalanga town of Bethal in the heart of South Africa’s coal belt, this wind energy project – spearheaded by unlisted coal producer Seriti’s green arm – is emblematic of the fossil fuel’s reinvention of itself in the face of overwhelming evidence that its use is fanning the flames of climate change scorching our planet.   

The wind that will spin the 91m blades of these turbines will generate power for a Seriti coal mine 20km away. Faced with predictions a few years ago of its impending extinction, the coal sector is not meekly going the way of the flightless dodo. 

It is in fight rather than flight mode. 

“As we stand here today, Seriti is not selling any of our coal mines. We are going to transition and it’s going to be smooth and just. This project for us is that vote of confidence,” Seriti CEO Mike Teke said at a media launch of the project on Thursday, 14 August.

The six wind turbines that have been erected so far will be followed by 19 others that will produce 155MW of power scheduled to go online in July 2026.   

This is the first of three phases of the Ummbila Emoyeni project – each comprising a 155MW wind energy facility – that is being rolled out by Seriti Green. The project will provide 75% of Seriti’s energy needs, meaning that much of its production of the carbon-heavy fossil fuel will be decarbonised. 

By 2027, Seriti Green aims to have a 900MW hybrid renewable energy cluster – the largest such project in South Africa – comprising five wind farms and one solar photovoltaic (PV) facility. 

Other South African coal producers such as Exxaro also have green units with renewable energy projects.

Coal’s reinvention is multipronged. 

The first prong involves reducing the carbon emissions linked to climate change needed to mine coal. 

The second prong involves decarbonising the energy unleashed by coal itself through initiatives such as “carbon capture and storage” – a process that is costly and controversial. 

The third prong is to change the current narrative to portray coal as critical to growing global energy needs, including on the renewables front – and to keep the taps open to finance projects new and old.  

This includes some facelifts. In 2023, the World Coal Association rebranded itself as FutureCoal: The Global Alliance for Sustainable Coal. The message is clear: coal has a future, and it is “sustainable”, a term normally associated with development-speak.  

On 12 August, Seriti’s Teke became chairperson of FutureCoal. An affable former school teacher who runs a coal company that is going green, Teke is an ideal fit for the sector’s charm offensive. 

“Our mission at FutureCoal is to define a future where coal is understood as a strategic resource necessary to alleviate poverty and underpin multiple aspects of modern living,” Teke said in a video message when his appointment was announced.

“I want every investor, producer, technologist and policymaker across our value chain to come out of the coal closet. Stop being silent supporters, stop apologising, and start leading.”

Out of the coal closet

And the door of the “coal closet” is opening. Just consider these these trends:

• Global coal use rose to an estimated record of 8.77 billion tonnes in 2024, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA);
• Global coal demand could remain stronger for longer, with coal-fired power generation potentially staying dominant through 2030, well beyond current projections for Peak Coal, says a new report from Wood Mackenzie;
• Coal still accounts for 35% of global electricity generation. In South Africa, it’s more than 80%;
• 30GW of coal power capacity was added globally in 2024, according to the IEA; and
• Several major US banks – including Citigroup, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and Britain’s HSBC – have quit the Net Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA) convened in April 2021 by the UN Environment Programme.

Global coal consumption 2000-2026. (Source: IEA)

The NZBA was seen as a vital tool for channelling finance flows from fossil fuels to renewables. Its aim was to shape lending and underwriting to help meet “net zero” carbon emission goals by 2050 in line with the objective to limit temperature increase to a maximum of 1.5º C compared with pre-industrial levels.

That, at least, was the idea. But “it has largely collapsed”, according to a recent report by the think-tank Green Central Banking. 

The winds of political change unleashed by the Trump administration blew US banks out of the NZBA. But overall, coal’s comeback is global. 

Unscripted

This was not in the script a few years ago.

In 2018, PwC data showed that coal accounted for 23% of mining revenue generated by the top 40 miners globally but only 15% of capital expenditure. 

Read more: Coal is a commodity king but bankers regard it as a fossil, if not outright radioactive

The reason for this disconnect? Banks were becoming increasingly reluctant to provide finance to the sector. And this was before the launch of the now withered NZBA. 

Companies such as Anglo American, under shareholder pressure, were shedding coal assets like they were toxic.

So the end of coal seemed nigh. But it is refusing to die. 

“... a confluence of factors, from a rapidly electrifying global economy to energy security priorities rising from geopolitical and cost shocks to Asia’s young and evolving coal fleet, could extend coal’s role as a vital power source well into the next decade and beyond,” notes Wood Mackenzie. 

These factors have given coal a new lease of life, and the financial taps – never shut in the first place – are flowing strongly again. 

“Coal continues to be the number-one commodity for project activity in 2025, accounting for almost 25% of the global activity based on the value of projects,” said a report early this year in the Engineering & Mining Journal. 

Global financing for fossil fuel companies – coal, oil and gas – rose $162-billion to $869-billion in 2024, the first increase since 2021, according to the Green Central Banking report cited above. 

“This growth in fossil fuel finance is troubling because new fossil fuel infrastructure locks in more decades of fossil fuel dependence,” the report says. 

The green energy transition is also well under way. In 2024, additional global annual renewable capacity soared 25% to 700GW – the 22nd consecutive year of record renewable energy expansion, according to the IEA.

That is almost 25 times more than the newly installed coal capacity in 2024. The problem is that coal capacity is still expanding when it needs to shrink if climate goals are to be met.

Achieving net zero by 2050 requires annual investment in coal and other fossil fuel sectors to halve by 2030, according to the IEA. But it’s growing, not slowing. 

And there are factors linked to the green energy transition itself which are extending the life of coal. 

Is coal needed to go green? 

Consider this: wind turbines like the ones Seriti Green is installing in Mpumalanga require 260 tonnes of steel forged from 170 tonnes of coking coal. This stuff doesn’t grow on trees. 

Also known as metallurgical coal, the coking variety – like its thermal twin used for power generation – is also a significant source of the Co2 emissions. “Green steel” made from a mix that includes hydrogen is an alternative and there is a lot of hype around it. But the sector remains in its infancy and costs remain a barrier. 

“Carbon capture and storage” is another area where coal is trying to clean up its act. This effectively involves storing it underground and is seen as something of a Holy Grail in the coal sector. 

“Carbon capture and storage technology can capture up to 90% of the carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from power plants and industrial facilities and store them safely underground or for other purposes,” FutureCoal says on its website. 

But the results have been mixed and costs are prohibitive.  

“... not all carbon capture projects offer the same economic and environmental benefits. In fact, some can actually worsen climate change,” Volker Sick, director of the Global CO2 Initiative, writes in The Conversation. 

Lipstick on a pig? 

The coalface of this clean-up is the growing use of renewable energy to power the mines that produce coal – and to provide power to other customers – such as the projects launched by Seriti Green and Exxaro’s Cennergi. 

Cennergi is aiming for 1.6GW of installed wind and solar energy by 2030. 

“We want to ensure that all of our mines have solar and wind energy to reduce both our power costs and our scope-2 emissions,” Exxaro CEO Ben Magara told Daily Maverick. 

Scope-2 emissions refer to indirect emissions that occur when a company purchases power, steam, heat or cooling. 

It all starts with a wind turbine made from coking coal and then shipped from China to Richards Bay to be hauled by a big diesel truck up the N2 and beyond. 

Many environmentalists would regard applying a green sheen to coal as akin to painting lipstick on a pig. But renewable energy also has a carbon footprint for anyone interested in tracking its spoor. 

It all underscores the point that there are no easy fixes as urbanisation and industrialisation continue apace. And the stakes are higher than the wind turbines rising over the fields of Mpumalanga. 

It is surely no bad thing that coal producers are reducing their emissions. But the urgency of the climate crisis casts coal’s comeback in a sobering – some would say sinister – light. 

Coal’s role in climate change is cast in scientific stone. It currently accounts for about 25% of greenhouse gas emissions – the biggest contributor – and its long history, entwined with the Industrial Revolution, means it has been the main driver of climate change for the past two centuries.  

The year 2024 was the warmest on record and the first that saw temperatures flare past the 1.5°C threshold above pre-industrial levels.

Read more: It’s official - 2024 warmest year on record globally  

The burning question is: if coal has a future, does the planet have one too? DM