Abstract
M.Phil.
Coal is today providing more than seventy-five percent of South
Africa's energy requirements and will, to a large extent, remain so
in the future. It is thus important to evaluate the adequacy of
the country's available coal resources against expected future demand.
The main objective of this study, which was done under the supervision
of Prof. D. J. Kotze, was therefore to analyse the specific
consumption of coal in the various consumption sectors in order to
establish historical trends. The specific comsumption of coal is
defined as the amount of coal used to produce a unit of final product.
The factors attributing to these observed trends were determined
and their future role evaluated in order to establish whether
it was possible to extrapolate historical trends into the future.
By means of curve fitting to the observed data and extrapolation it
was possible to obtain future values of specific coal consumption
for each of the sectors. These values, together with the production
output forecasts for the various sectors were then used to
calculate the total coal requirements for three reference years,
namely, 1990, 1995 and 2000.
The role of coal prices in explaining trends in specific coal consumption
of various sectors was also analised separately.
Information to conduct the study was obtained mainly from the
various coal producers' associations as well as from individual
producers and other organizations such as Escom, Sasol and Iscor,
the Department of Hineral and Energy Affairs and the Hinerals
Bureau. In some instances private firms and producers' associations
were also consulted as well as a wide variety of literature
on the subject.
The principal finding of the study was that coal was substituted or
was still being substituted by electricity in most final applications
because of the convenience of use. Coal, however, still
plays and probably will continue to play an important role in
future in basic industries such as the metallurgical industry.
Coal prices have not up to now played a very important role in the
overall specific consumption of coal which can probably be
attributed to the relatively low prices of coal on the inland
market. It was also found that it was not desirable to do away
with the present system of price control entirely as a certain
measure of control was still necessary to safeguard the usuage of
coal in certain applications for which there were no other substitutes.
It was further concluded that South Africa does not have the vast
quantities of coal commonly thought and that measures have to be
taken in order to ensure that the country's coal resources are conserved
and that optimum use is made of available resources.