State-owned Transnet Freight Rail (TFR) has welcomed the recent arrest and conviction of four men for theft of essential infrastructure on its rail network. The Thabazimbi Regional Court on May 31 sentenced the four men to 49 years each for various charges related to the theft of essential infrastructure from the railway line between Northam [...]

Investment in clean energy technologies will climb to $2-trillion this year, almost double the amount spent on fossil fuels, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). Two-thirds of the record $3-trillion invested in energy sources in 2024 will be devoted to sectors such as renewables, electric vehicles, nuclear power, grids, storage and efficiency, even as [...]

State-owned power utility Eskom reports that one of the two accused suspects in a case involving critical infrastructure tampering has been convicted at the Kriel Magistrate Court and sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment. The two suspects were arrested on February 24, 2022, on suspicion of stealing copper bars and installed copper at a substation in [...]

Platinum group metal (PGM) is once again coming to the fore as a mineral resource that goes the extra mile in protecting a threatened global environment. The latest indispensable commodity that is poised to be shielded by PGM, which has been safeguarding the air of cities from vehicle exhaust fumes for many decades, is drinking [...]

Environmental activist nonprofit organisation the Green Connection has taken the National Energy Regulator of South Africa (Nersa) and the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy (DMRE) to court in an effort to “force” them to supply key information regarding the Karpowership deals. Karpowership uses powerships, or floating power plants, that can anchor at ports and [...]

Nearly 50 deals and agreements have been signed during South Korea's first summit with leaders from 48 African countries to cooperate in areas such as mining, energy and manufacturing, South Korea's industry ministry said on Wednesday. Hyosung Corp, a South Korean conglomerate, signed a contract to supply electric transformers to Mozambique worth $30-million, the ministry [...]

The first call applications for the R400-million junior mining exploration fund (JMEF) close on July 12. This was stated on Tuesday in a media release issued by the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy (DMRE), in partnership with the Council for Geoscience (CGS) and the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC).

The National Nuclear Regulator (NNR) has started with another round of hearings on June 3, owing to concerns about the last consultation process having been insufficient. The regulator conceded that the public required more information, but only after civil society organisations such as Southern African Faith Communities’ Environment Institute (Safcei) voiced its dissatisfaction with the [...]

At its annual general meeting in Dubai, the global representative body for the airline industry, the International Air Transport Association (IATA), announced that its profitability forecast for the worldwide airline sector this year was now higher than it had been in its previous two forecasts. These previous profitability forecasts for 2024 had been issued in [...]

Traceability is becoming an increasingly important part of the natural diamond industry, specifically in terms of being able to verify provenance or origin. G7 sanctions being applied also make traceability technology more important.

The Department of Mineral Resources and Energy has announced that both grades of petrol – 93 and 95 – will decrease by R1.24 a litre, with effect from June 5. Diesel prices will also decrease by between R1.08 and R1.18 a litre.

Although Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) are key to decarbonisation, current NDCs only amount to 1 300 GW, or 12%, of the renewable energy capacity needed to meet the objective of tripling renewable energy as set at the COP28 conference. At COP28, nearly 200 countries pledged to triple the world’s renewable power capacity this decade, which is [...]