Renewable energy business platform Discovery Green is sharpening its focus on South Africa’s mining industry as the energy transition reshapes competitiveness, costs and carbon exposure across the sector.

The company plans to use this year’s Investing in African Mining Indaba as a catalyst for accelerated renewable-energy adoption and to develop new partnerships.

Discovery Green will attend this year’s Indaba with a focused agenda centred on advancing renewable-energy integration in mining, accelerating grid- efficient technology adoption, and positioning itself as a strategic partner in Africa’s decarbonisation transition.

Speaking ahead of the Cape Town gathering, Discovery Green head Andre Nepgen emphasises that the company’s role is not regulatory advocacy but rather enabling mines to act on sustainability imperatives already influencing the sector.

The policy, export market, and environmental, social and governance (ESG) pressures driving decarbonisation, he argues, are well-established; however, he says what is currently needed are scalable solutions and rapid uptake.

“Many have an impression that when it comes to shifting to clean power or achieving net zero, it’s a premium. [However], that narrative is completely wrong.

“Renewable energy is cheaper, improves competitiveness, and it’s actually becoming a cost-saving strategy. Previously you just kept the head of ESG happy – now you’re keeping the CFO happy,” states Nepgen.

Discovery Green, which has already facilitated more than R10-billion in renewable-energy development for its mining clients, has built a portfolio that cuts across commodity types and operation scales.

The company’s supply footprint includes large producers such as platinum group metals miner Impala Platinum and diversified natural resources company Glencore, as well as manganese and limestone producers, with a technology-agnostic approach to generation.

Grid Squeeze Drives Supply Urgency

One of the central messages Discovery Green intends to deliver at this year’s Mining Indaba is urgency, with Nepgen highlighting that South Africa’s grid constraints, shrinking transmission capacity and rising competition for wind-generation connections mean that miners risk future bottlenecks if procurement is delayed.

“We need greater urgency for people to take action,” Nepgen stresses, explaining that while capacity may exist today, it is already diminishing, and waiting could push new connections years into the future.

This comes as the market enters its first full year of liberalisation – a structural shift that lowers barriers for smaller operators, opens private-generation access and reduces contract complexity in a space that was previously reserved for mining majors, he says.

Further, aggregated trading platforms and risk-sharing structures now allow mid-tier and junior miners to secure renewables without the exposure once associated with long-term offtake or typical complexities of a power purchase agreement, he points out.

Discovery Green sees this shift as a springboard for broader engagement with new-generation miners, developers and future operations entering feasibility and construction phases.

Lower-cost electricity, Nepgen argues, has the potential to improve project viability, accelerate new mine development and reshape input-cost profiles that have traditionally been fixed.

Decision Driver

Energy price inflation has turned power into one of the most material operating-cost variables, states Discovery Green actuarial and research and development head Dan Ginsberg.

“After labour, energy is often a miner’s biggest line item. Our offering materially drops the price of energy for a very large amount of coverage, and locks it in real terms for years or decades, while still giving customers operational flexibility when shutdowns or disruptions occur,” he highlights.

At this year’s Mining Indaba, Discovery Green will convene a cohort of mining companies already using its renewables solutions alongside companies yet to transition, to drive peer-to-peer dialogue and transaction confidence.

For many operators, seeing established producers successfully adopt clean power may be the tipping point for action, suggests Ginsberg.

Nepgen views collective participation as central to reducing systemic risk, highlighting that the more companies that join and take part, the more everyone protects the mining ecosystem.

“If one mine shuts for maintenance, energy can be transferred to another. Diversification strengthens the whole market,” says Nepgen.