According to Mining News Pro - Rising demand for minerals reinforces the importance of sustainable mining that embraces technologies, predictive models, green mining processes, and automation to reduce time and the carbon footprint, the mining 4.0 webinar was told.
Miners' strategies should incorporate environmental, social and governance (ESG) principles, said Sergio Campana, Latin America manager of Rockwell Automation.
Automation and artificial intelligence help reduce the number of consumables while maximizing the amount of extracted or produced minerals. Monitoring becomes key. "If it cannot be measured, it cannot be managed," said Campana, highlighting the importance of technologies.
Sigdo Koppers' project and engineering director, Ricardo Thumala, said holistic thinking is essential to achieve efficiency. He emphasized the advantages of the EPC concept for improving operational efficiency in the shortest time, which allows to deploy less direct labor to mining sites, leading to less transport and a lower carbon footprint.
Building Information Modeling (BIM) is another concept miners should incorporate. This process integrates multiple-source data to generate a digital representation of an asset throughout its life cycle, from planning and design to construction and operations. BIM provides all definitions for the project, starting from the basic engineering design to the plant dismantling stage, according to Thumala.
Robotics will also boost efficiency, said Thumala, highlighting Boston Dynamics' robot Spot, which Sigdo Koppers uses to collect data and identify interferences in areas that are risky for humans. And collecting data through a scanner allows monitoring the project's progress, he added.
Thumala provided two examples of the advantages of technologies and EPC. First was the replacement of a ball mill at BHP's Chilean Escondida mine, moving the mill from a brownfield site by visualizing each stage in 3D and using an early engineering design to identify risks and establish all transport maneuvers. This planning reduced execution time and the carbon footprint, Thumala said.
The second project was the replacement of the ship loader for Collahuasi mining company. The challenge was to finish the project in a record time of 35 days, when similar processes take around five months. As a result, fewer workers were transported, camps were smaller, and food expenses lower.
Mining smarter
In terms of production, panelist Mark Selby, CEO of Canada Nickel Company (TSXV:CNC,OTCQX:CNIKF), told PDAC attendees that his company was founded with a focus on being a net-zero operation.
“We're very fortunate that the class of nickel deposits that we pursue have this great property that the tailings and waste rock, which make up 90 percent of what we mine, spontaneously absorb CO2 when exposed to air,” Selby said. “So in the actual mining process, we'll be generating carbon credits.”
The push to electrification was also top of mind for panelist Chris Tucker, corporate innovations manager at Skeena Resources (TSXV:SKE,NYSE:SKE), a precious metals explorer with projects in BC.
Ensuring the mining jurisdiction can facilitate clean electricity was a factor Tucker and the other panelists emphasized. "We now (have) clean hydropower right up our access road, so the opportunity for us to electrify as much of our operations as possible is really imminent,” Tucker said. “And it’s driven by wanting to do the right thing, it's driven by the interests of our First Nation partners, but it's also driven by economics.”
From a junior perspective, developing net-zero strategies and implementing electrification make a company more appealing to majors, Tucker explained, referencing Gold Fields' (NYSE:GFI) acquisition of Yamana Gold (TSX:YRI,NYSE:AU), announced at the end of May for US$6.7 billion.
"You're seeing a little bit more language and thought around carbon intensity in mergers and acquisitions in the Gold Fields/Yamana (deal). The low GHG emissions of Yamana’s operations were very appealing to Gold Fields.”
Ultimately, as Dan Myerson, executive chairman of Foran Mining (TSXV:FOM,OTCQX:FMCXF) — a diversified Saskatchewan-focused explorer — pointed out, the mining sector is more vital right now than ever before.
“To be frank, decarbonization cannot happen without electrification, and electrification cannot happen without mining,” Myerson said. “We've got to sort of change the way mining actually operates so that we can provide these critical minerals to enable this transition to an electrified and decarbonized world.”
Robust emissions targeting needed
For the mining sector to keep in line with the 1.5 degrees Celsius goal, the industry will need to decrease its annual emissions by two-thirds before 2030 and a further 90 percent before 2050. That might sound daunting, but Muller-Falcke laid out three ways the mining sector can benefit from decarbonization.
The first point he mentioned was the potential to improve financial performance by implementing economic decarbonization initiatives that will bring down overhead costs. The second was the possibility of capitalizing off rising demand for green materials and commodities needed for decarbonization. The third way was the opportunity to build new green businesses around the energy transition and decarbonization.
As he explained, adopting strategies that address these issues will not only aid in reducing global emissions, but also make good economic sense.
“When we put them together into a really aggressive decarbonization strategy, (we could see) around 40 percent emissions reduction by 2025,” he told the audience at his PDAC talk. “That means implementing energy efficiency measures in mining feed processing plants; it means switching to renewable electricity and energy storage, and also electrifying as much of the equipment as possible.”
If successful, eradicating all emissions by 2035 is possible, and will also allow for the electrification of all transport inside and outside of mines. The partner at McKinsey & Company went on to say that from there the mining sector can begin to look across its supply pipeline for ways to optimize value.
“Then also partnering with other companies around the value chain, especially downstream processing, who have also eliminated emissions,” he said.
He also suggested that companies aim to scale technologies crucial for decarbonization. “If you are a mining company that wants to accelerate implementation of these technologies for your own sake, you can partner up with the companies that are developing these technologies to make sure that those technologies get piloted at your mine site, (and also) have a stake in that and participate in the broader rollout of the technology," he added.
In terms of in-demand materials, he pointed to electric vehicle metals (cobalt, lithium and nickel), but noted that he expects to see the most demand growth for copper and aluminum.
Mining innovation the first step to net zero
The PDAC panel discussion "What Does Decarbonization Mean for Junior Mining?" also focused on ways to leverage existing technology to increase mining efficiency.
Like Muller-Falcke, panelist Rohitesh Dhawan, president and CEO of ICMM, emphasized the need to broadly reduce emissions across the mining sector.
“Just as the world is looking to us to provide the critical minerals to enable every other sector to decarbonize, it puts on us an ever greater strategic and moral responsibility to make sure our own emissions are as low as possible,” he said. “And we're making that happen through a range of measures.”
Dhawan wants to see more synergistic partnerships between the mining sector and other industries.
“(Especially) a collaboration between the manufacturers of original equipment (OEMs) and the mining companies, because we know that at a mine site, of course, diesel emissions from the use of mobile equipment account for between 30 and 80 percent of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions,” he said.
As part of this effort, ICMM — which connects a third of the mining sector to key ESG partners — has brought together 19 OEMs and 28 mining companies to “accelerate the deployment of zero-emission vehicles.”
“It's given rise to initiatives like Charge On, which is accelerating the deployment of zero-emission — both electric, as well as hydrogen and hybrid — vehicles to enable the entire industry to decarbonize as quickly as possible,” Dhawan said. The global urgency of emissions reduction has also allowed for quicker adoption of these vehicles.
“The timeframe for deploying these vehicles when we started was 2040; that was three years ago, we were talking about 2040,” he said. “Today we know they're already available. And they will be available at scale now by 2027.”