Transparency on greenhouse gas emissions from mining to enable climate change mitigation

Azadi, Mehdi; Northey, Stephen; Ali, Saleem H.; Edraki, Mansour

doi:10.1038/s41561-020-0531-3

Cited by 149 publications

(87 citation statements)

References 39 publications

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“…Strategies to avoid high-risk contexts may push cobalt extraction into areas where ESG risks and implications are disputed, e.g., seabed mining 22 , 23 . The Clarion-Clipperton seabed mining zone alone contains more cobalt than the entire global terrestrial reserve base 24 . The search for alternative sources or substitute metals will need to be supported by quantitative assessments of source risks.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This debate highlights the dual role of the mining industry as both a negative impactor and a supplier of ETMs that are crucial for climate change mitigation. The mining industry is an intensive energy user and greenhouse gas emitter 24 and is perceived as a dirty activity that has caused adverse social and environmental impacts. The synergies and trade-offs at the source of ETM supply chains should be interrogated with greater focus and depth than has occurred to date.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The social and environmental complexities of extracting energy transition metals

et al. 2020

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Environmental, social and governance pressures should feature in future scenario planning about the transition to a low carbon future. As low-carbon energy technologies advance, markets are driving demand for energy transition metals. Increased extraction rates will augment the stress placed on people and the environment in extractive locations. To quantify this stress, we develop a set of global composite environmental, social and governance indicators, and examine mining projects across 20 metal commodities to identify the co-occurrence of environmental, social and governance risk factors. Our findings show that 84% of platinum resources and 70% of cobalt resources are located in high-risk contexts. Reflecting heightened demand, major metals like iron and copper are set to disturb more land. Jurisdictions extracting energy transition metals in low-risk contexts are positioned to develop and maintain safeguards against mining-related social and environmental risk factors.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The social and environmental complexities of extracting energy transition metals

et al. 2020

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“…As a consequence, we interpreted SR and SRR as subsets of economic risk in the multiple-metal approach. One of the principle drawbacks of many studies is the limited specification of environmental role at the national criticality evaluation; however, mineral processing actions noticeably deteriorate the quality of nature that would eventually aggregate unprecedented catastrophes such as atmospheric imbalance in the planet Earth (Azadi et al, 2020;Liu et al, 2012). Hence, environmental consequences may intervene to increase the economic risk in a country.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A method to assess national metal criticality: the environment as a foremost measurement

Eheliyagoda

Zeng

2020

Humanit Soc Sci Commun

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Ever-increasing mineral demand inspires nations to inspect the metal criticality situation that would be an indispensable path to ensure supply security in a foreseeable future. A diverse range of methods has been used to analyze the criticality; however, except a few, their applicability is questionable due to varying results. This article presents and discusses an advanced method to measure the degree of national criticality of metals conjoining both previously noted and pioneer indicators while considering China as the sample at the necessary point. The formulated methodology consists of a three-dimensional framework: supply risk, environmental risk, and supply restriction risk. The risk score of each indicator under each dimension is calculated through a specifically designed methodology. The risk score range is interpreted to a general 0-100 scale. The final risk score of each dimension is determined by averaging the total indicator risk score of that dimension. The developed criticality method is applicable for countries, which take part in the mineral production. The environmental-risk assessment is performed for 56-62 countries in reference to copper and aluminum production. Further discussion in relation to the country-specific criticality is decentralized observing the risk severity of indicators under two succinct approaches: singlemetal approach and multiple-metal approach. The obtained results associated with China demonstrate that substantial criticalities can be aggregated in supply restriction and environmental sides regarding copper and aluminum, respectively. However, the environmentalrisk assessment conducted for various nations in the world shows a very low risk status except the China's situation. Although, such indicator quantifications in the proposed method are transparent, robust, reliable, and flexible to encounter medium-term perspectives, the conducted assessment is relatively static since the evaluation is almost based on the year 2015 statistics and information. Nevertheless, the created methodology will be advantageous as a decision-making tool to implement productive national strategies and policies to achieve resource sustainability. Here, a national government can address certain issues related to the metal production by distinghushing indicator values. A government can also determine what optimizations would strategically profitable in short and medium terms such as recycling, substitutes, and imports.

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“…Such metal recovery is also intrinsically energy intensive; the mining industry is among the most important individual contributors to the climate emergency ( 4 ). It is estimated that in 2018, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with primary mineral and metal production amounted to 3.6 × 10 12 kg of CO 2 (excluding energy carriers, such as coal and uranium, and mineral aggregates), which was equivalent to ~10% of the total annual energy-related GHG emissions ( 5 ). Within this, copper (Cu) mining and refining were among the most intensive GHG emitters with approximately 6 × 10 10 kg of CO 2 released ( 4 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Under these circumstances, conventional Cu mining becomes increasingly challenging because of the necessity to remove, process, and store large quantities of waste rock. Moreover, the economic viability of processing such diminishing grade material relies on a continual improvement in the efficiency of mining technologies and/or the economy of scale, i.e., the use of large infrastructure to deal with high throughput ( 17 ), using more energy, water, and land per unit mass of extracted Cu ( 5 ). Similar considerations also apply for many other commodities.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Toward a more sustainable mining future with electrokinetic in situ leaching

et al. 2021

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Metals are currently almost exclusively extracted from their ore via physical excavation. This energy-intensive process dictates that metal mining remains among the foremost CO2 emitters and mine waste is the single largest waste form by mass. We propose a new approach, electrokinetic in situ leaching (EK-ISL), and demonstrate its applicability for a Cu-bearing sulfidic porphyry ore. In laboratory-scale experiments, Cu recovery was rapid (up to 57 weight % after 94 days) despite low ore hydraulic conductivity (permeability = 6.1 mD; porosity = 10.6%). Multiphysics numerical model simulations confirm the feasibility of EK-ISL at the field scale. This new approach to mining is therefore poised to spearhead a new paradigm of metal recovery from currently inaccessible ore bodies with a markedly reduced environmental footprint.

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Transparency on greenhouse gas emissions from mining to enable climate change mitigation

Cited by 149 publications

References 39 publications

The social and environmental complexities of extracting energy transition metals

The social and environmental complexities of extracting energy transition metals

A method to assess national metal criticality: the environment as a foremost measurement

Toward a more sustainable mining future with electrokinetic in situ leaching

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