The fastest energy transition in Africa is happening inside mine fences. While national grids argue about policy, mining companies have quietly contracted gigawatts of private renewable power, and not for public relations reasons. The arithmetic flipped: solar became the cheapest electron available to a mine in most of Africa, and the most reliable one in South Africa. The numbers below are from company results, not press releases.
Why are mines building renewables?
Cost and reliability first, carbon second. Eskom tariffs have risen over 900 percent since 2008, grid power across the continent is unreliable, and diesel backup is brutally expensive. Solar now undercuts both almost everywhere, so renewables are simply the cheapest way to keep a plant running, with emissions reduction as the bonus.
What is actually built, in megawatts
The committed numbers are getting large. Sasol has secured over 1.2 gigawatts of renewable capacity with more than 500 megawatts already operational, feeding the Secunda complex it must decarbonise, as covered in our Secunda analysis. Zimplats is building a 185 megawatt solar complex across its Zimbabwe operations, with 35 megawatts running and 45 more completing in 2026. Exxaro commissioned a 68 megawatt solar plant at Grootegeluk that saves it around R100 million a year in power costs, and approved R4.7 billion for a wind project. Seriti Green is erecting 155 megawatts of wind in the Mpumalanga coalfields to power its own coal mines, targeting a 900 megawatt cluster. Glencore signed a 20-year renewable supply deal covering four South African operations. And Kumba’s Kolomela mine already runs on wheeled renewable power that cut its grid emissions by 72 percent. The pattern across all of them: the miner rarely owns the plant, it signs a long-term purchase agreement and lets an energy company carry the construction.
The wheeling revolution
The most important development is regulatory, not technical. Wheeling, paying to move privately generated power across the public grid, means a mine in the Northern Cape can buy wind power generated in the Eastern Cape. South Africa’s licensing reforms unlocked this, and it changes who can go renewable: not just mines with spare land and sun, but any operation connected to the grid. It also explains the new corporate species, the mining-focused independent power producer, signing multi-decade deals against mining balance sheets. Around 1,200 megawatts of private mine-linked power projects were approved in South Africa in 2025 alone.
What renewables cannot yet do
Run a smelter through the night, mainly. Furnaces, winders and process plants need constant power, and batteries at that scale remain expensive, so every mine renewable programme today is a hybrid: solar or wind shaving 20 to 40 percent off grid or diesel consumption, with firm power still coming from somewhere else. That ceiling rises as storage costs fall, but it explains why the ferrochrome smelters died of electricity prices even while solar boomed around them. Energy-intensive beneficiation needs cheap firm power, and renewables alone do not yet provide it. The coal-side implications are unpacked in the coal question.
Who benefits beyond the mine?
The grid, oddly enough. Every megawatt a mine self-supplies is a megawatt freed for everyone else, which is why governments that once resisted private generation now approve it in bulk. And the construction itself has become a significant industry: panels, turbines, transmission work and the civil packages around them now show up in mining-region procurement pipelines alongside conventional mine contracts, from the Mpumalanga coalfields to the Zimbabwean Great Dyke.
What this means for suppliers
Mine renewables are a parallel procurement stream with its own buyers: the energy IPPs and EPC contractors building the plants, and the mines contracting them. Electrical, civil, security, monitoring and maintenance work all flow from each project, usually over multi-year builds. If you already supply mines, the same sites are now also energy construction sites. AMIQ tracks 2,200+ African mining projects with verified owner and engineer contacts, including the operations running these energy programmes. Join at AMIQ.
Frequently asked questions
Which African mines use renewable energy?
Most large groups now do somewhere: Sasol (over 500 megawatts operational), Exxaro’s Grootegeluk solar, Zimplats’ 185 megawatt Zimbabwe programme, Kumba’s Kolomela on wheeled renewables, Glencore’s 20-year South African supply deal, Seriti’s wind cluster and Gold Fields’ South Deep solar among them.
Why do mines prefer solar power?
It is the cheapest new power source in most of Africa, it beats unreliable grids and costly diesel, and mines have land and predictable daytime loads. Long-term purchase agreements let miners lock in prices without building or owning the plants.
Can a mine run entirely on renewables?
Not yet, in most cases. Smelters and continuous plants need firm round-the-clock power, and grid or thermal supply still covers nights and low-wind periods. Today’s programmes typically replace 20 to 40 percent of consumption, a share that rises as battery storage gets cheaper.
What is electricity wheeling?
Paying to transmit privately generated power across the public grid from where it is produced to where it is used. South Africa’s reforms made it practical, letting mines buy renewable power from distant wind and solar farms rather than only from on-site plants.
