Total Renewables Unit Targets Africa’s Power-starved Mining Sector

Total’s renewable energy unit said recently that it had opened the world’s largest solar-thermal hybrid plant in Burkina Faso, the first of what it hopes will be many projects supplying the African mining industry’s growing need for power.

Christophe Fleurence, Total

Eren’s Vice President for business development in Africa, said the plan was to replicate this with other mining projects.

“It’s gathering pace in terms of interest in all the discussions we’ve had with our contacts in the mining industry,” Fleurence said.

Mining companies operating in remote areas have long relied on thermal power plants, making their operations carbon-intensive and their costs vulnerable to fluctuations in world oil prices.

As the price of photovoltaic panels has dropped in recent years, several mining operations have added solar capacity to help cut power costs. However, most of those projects have been relatively small.

The Essakane plant, made up of nearly 130,000 solar panels, is expected to decrease the mine’s fuel consumption by some six million litres per year and reduce CO2 emissions by around 18,500 tonnes per year.

The gold mine will buy the entirety of the plant’s production via a 15-year power purchasing agreement signed with a specialpurpose company in which Total Eren owns a 90 percent stake.

“We do see this as likely to be adopted more and more going forward,” AEMP co-founder

Richard Duffy said. “We talk to a number of mining companies. We have various projects in the pipeline - some of them not dissimilar to Essakane.”