Sustainability
Zero to hero T
A long road lies ahead for the mining industry on its quest towards carbon neutrality, as established mines look for new and improved ways to reduce their environmental impact. However, some mines that are currently in development are looking to get ahead of the game. Isabel Ellis talks to Dan Myerson, executive chair of Foran Mining, and James Whiteside, global head of corporate research at Wood Mackenzie, to learn more about the development of the fi rst zero-carbon mines.
he fumes that spill out of mines have polluted more than the atmosphere. It’s the fact that they’ve also seeped into people’s heads, turning them against mining in all its forms, that is contributing to making climate change so difficult to solve. As it stands, a five-fold increase in the supply of base metals is required to limit global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. To many, 2.5°C sounds more like an apocalypse than a target, but we still need to unearth two and a half times as much base metals as we do today to stand a chance of keeping planetary temperatures within that range. For the most vociferous advocates for rapidly cutting carbon emissions, however, ‘mining’ doesn’t make them think of the copper, nickel and lithium necessary for greening the future, but the coal that put it in jeopardy. Without more mines, there can be no energy transition – but to build more mines, miners need a clean break from their past. That means mining without emitting any greenhouse gases at all. “The issue that we’ve got, as a society and also as a mining industry, is that to decarbonise and electrify the world you need mines,” explains Dan
Myerson, executive chair of Foran Mining, which is developing the world’s first carbon-neutral copper project at McIlvenna Bay in Saskatchewan, Canada. “But it’s a bit of an oxymoron, in that mining actually contributes a lot of greenhouse gas emissions to the world. We’ve got to find a way to mine responsibly and innovatively.”
The decarbonisation process Here, in short, is the problem: mining is among the industries most vulnerable to the shift against carbon, while also being the one on which the entire energy transition turns. The copper that Foran intends to mine at McIlvenna Bay illustrates that central paradox better than any other mineral. Wood Mackenzie estimates that ‘net-zero 2050’ will require an extra 19 million tonnes of the metal per year – almost double the current output – by 2040. That would be exceedingly difficult even if the scope one and two emissions released by copper mining operations in 2019 weren’t higher than those associated with any mineral except coal. More copper mines are urgently needed, but their current
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World Mining Frontiers /
www.nsenergybusiness.com
Foran
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