This paper investigates the financial and environmental consequences stemming from the introduction of a carbon levy applied to mining and processing activities. The novelty is twofold: (1) the effect of a carbon tax, proportional to the emissions produced by all relevant mining activities, is accounted for in the determination of the Ultimate Pit Limit (UPL), i.e. the environmental costs are not applied a posteriori to pit optimization but included concurrently to Net Present Value (NPV) maximization, allowing to investigate the relationship between carbon tax value versus NPV, amount of ore extracted and carbon emissions; (2) we use a new software, OptimalSlope, to automatically determine geotechnically optimal profiles for the mine pitwalls. The Marvin copper deposit (block model data publicly available from MineLib repository) was adopted as a case study. Several pit optimizations were performed based on four different values of carbon tax and adopting either traditional planar or non-linear optimal pitwalls. It emerges that the relationships between carbon tax value versus NPV, amount of ore extracted, and carbon emissions exhibited linearity in both cases of planar and optimal pitwall profiles. Moreover, the adoption of optimal profiles realizes gains up to 215 million AUD, without compromising the safety of the UPL.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.