Every Friday, SAfm speaks to Martin Creamer, publishing editor of Engineering News & Mining Weekly. Reported here is the transcript from this Friday’s At the Coalface hosted by radio anchor Flo Letoaba:

Letoaba: Removing carbon from the world is the greatest ever investment opportunity of our lifetime, according to our platinum miner Sibanye-Stillwater.

Creamer: Decarbonisation comes about with the help of our platinum group metals and with the use of nickel and with the use of lithium and a lot of other metals like that. This has been seen by Sibanye-Stillwater, which mines in South Africa, and also in the US, as the greatest ever investment opportunity of our lifetime.

When you look at this philosophy it is also reflected in the comments of major CEOs around the world who agree with this. So, this is a huge opportunity for South Africa. We are well placed. Why? Because we have the sun, we have the wind, and all we need to back it up with is good storage. Once you've got that green energy, you can bring in the green hydrogen, which is an energy source in itself when you store it. When you store that you're storing electricity. You can use that to drive your cars, you can use it as little power stations and you getting the cleanliness that the world needs. The thing is we need to take this climate change seriously.

Some people are still not taking it seriously enough. If we don't, it will make Covid-19 look like a Sunday school picnic. Because when the temperature changes as predicted there could be massive implications for us, particularly in Southern Africa.

Letoaba: Zimbabwe has stolen a march on South Africa by awarding a 185 MW solar power licence to South Africa-linked platinum miner Zimplats.

Creamer: 185 MW says something because we are going for 100 MW.  This is 85 MW higher from a country which is not as big a user of electricity. So, what does it show? That these people are getting ahead of us, they're going faster, the licences are already awarded. I have still to hear of a licence being awarded at that sort of level in South Africa.

Zimplats, which is controlled by our Implats, is ahead of Implats, which operates in South Africa, which hasn't even got a renewables licence. And yet, they all need the energy. We have still got the load-shedding, we have still got expensive electricity. Yet a country like Zimbabwe can move ahead of us, and we still don't get the encouragement to use our sun and wind. We have got great sun and we have got prime wind, and we can really lead, but there's not enough encouragement, and it is really distressing.

Letoaba: Fears are being allayed that the Russia-Ukraine conflict will negatively impact South Africa’s mining industry.

Creamer: We were very worried about platinum group metals, because we have been joined at the hip for decades, in the field of platinum group metals with Russia. Russia is the biggest producer of palladium.

Russia produces 38% of the world's palladium. It also produces 10% of platinum, 8% of iridium and 4% of ruthenium. So, when you hear the word sanctions, you suddenly get a fear, that if sanctions are imposed on these platinum group metals, it will have a massive impact. Fortunately, no sanctions have been imposed on these metals. So, we also look at some opportunities that are developing through this conflict.

It is terrible to talk about opportunities when there is such distress there, and children running and people fleeing, but there is an opportunity, because on the coal front, Europe will now be looking away from Russia and towards other people to get the coal. Guess what? We've got the quality that Europe needs. We could then have a very big plus for our coal at that aspect. So, it could be a positive. But we don't like to talk about too many positives with so many negatives going on.

Letoaba: Thanks very much. Martin Creamer is publishing editor of Engineering News and Mining Weekly.