Greening the Mining Industry - Part 2

Green Design

Introduction

There is no doubt that dealing with issues of sustainability is difficult. While there is a level of awareness among organisations of the coming need to achieve ‘sustainability’ goals, they are not yet sure of what governments may require of them, so it is difficult to plan responses. There is reasonable clarity on what the issues are: enhanced greenhouse effect, continental and global fresh water availability, toxicity, and eventually issues of ongoing availability of some resources. Planning for success in a market regime where external forces are poorly understood is a great challenge. Even so, a cursory analysis of the likely scenarios indicates that everybody will need to be reducing their greenhouse gas contributions, reducing their impact on the water cycle and reducing the inputs of toxic materials to the environment.

So what can organisations be doing and thinking about now to help them position themselves to be competitive in a world where their ability to comply with government regulations and to do business sustainably, may determine their ongoing existence?

Firstly, companies need to understand and accept that the world is changing, and that societal pressures will require them to respond. If we accept that there is a need to do business differently, the response needs to consider remediating for current operations, and adopting new practices for new operations.

For the mining industry, where particular operations may persist for more than 50 years, there are many current operations with long futures still ahead of them, and no doubt many planned operations will be operating well into the 21st century. Interestingly, many of the projected consequences of global climate change are expected to occur within that same timeframe.

Introducing the new systems and procedures to new operations will be challenging, but nowhere near as hard as retrofitting brownfield operations. The best time to position for success in greenfield operations is during the design phase. This article introduces some of the issues around incorporating sustainability requirements in the design phase. Remediating brownfield operations will be the subject of later articles – so keep an eye on future issues of Symbiosis.

Are we prepared?

In a survey conducted by PWC in 2008 (Table 1) less than 10% of resources industry CEO’s had a high level of confidence in their greenhouse emissions data. More that 50% had taken little or no action to address the issues.
Reporting of greenhouse emission will be required by the Australian Government for almost all mining companies commencing in the financial year 2008-2009. Clearly the level of reparedness for the upcoming requirements in Australia is low, and yet the time of implementation is very near!

What can you do?

Mining Companies need to approach the process of smart design in the following stages;

• Understand the issues
• Work out the information you need
• Simulate and design iteratively until the optimal design is achieved.

Understand the issues

I dealt with the high level issues of sustainability in the mining industry in issue n. Broadly speaking, the considerable interest and debate around the globe on climate change means proactive action is very important and mining companies will need to respond quickly and credibly if they are to retain their ‘licence to operate’. It’s nothing new, the mining industry has been responding to changing community attitudes for the last 3000 years.
Work out the information you need.

In order to respond to anthropogenic climate drivers, and government and community requirements to report on those responses, as well as potentially develop new markets, products and businesses, organisations need to identify what information they need to be collecting. A number of organisations have commenced this work. Firstly the Global Reporting Initiative , is one organisation (see Callout 1) that has widespread support and hasas well as a framework which is currently being used for many nations’ emissions reporting requirements. The ‘Mining and Metals’ sector supplement includes specific details of the information and procedures that should be considered. The Australian Government’s National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Act (NGER) provides specific requirements for Australia, and other jurisdictions should publish their requirements in due course.

Iterative simulation and design

The ability to optimise a process for any particular outcome is best achieved in the design of that process, before large expenditures on capital works and equipment make later changes very expensive. Adisa Azapagic of the University of Surrey has studied many aspects of this issue including sustainable development indicators and process design. In these works, Azapagic develops a methodology for considering sustainability issues in the design of chemical processes and further develops the ideas by translating that to the mining industry .

In order to do this, you require an intimate knowledge of the mining process and an holistic view that takes account of the affects of process inputs, as well as the downstream effects of process outputs. That is, it optimises the process not just within the process, but external to the process.

Most industries have a good understanding of how to design a process to optimise financial outcomes, indeed financial outcomes are usually they way that we decide on the viability of an investment. Unfortunately, environmental outcomes are usually considered late in the planning cycle, and certainly after the major design decisions have been made.

Other recent contributions to the literature detail how to measure sustainability outcomes in infrastructure projects and Mangena and Brent describe the application of a Life Cycle Impact Assessment framework in the coal industry . Finally, the development of a mining Life Cycle Assessment Model (LICYMIN) at the Imperial College London provides a solid basis for using the other tools to model a mining operation throughout its whole life (Figure 1).

Figure 1 - The mining life cycle impact assessment system and model boundaries. [after Durucan et al 2006]

Discussion

These and many other works have defined the macro and micro level processes and the inputs and outputs of all stages of a mining operation. They explain how these data can be used to optimise sustainable design through a process of simulation in a systems thinking environment. Importantly, this allows these new decision making criteria to be included along with the economic criteria (which are also in the models). Modelling different scenarios in a simulation environment allows all aspects to be considered to provide the best possible outcome; for the company and for the environment. Most importantly, the case is made for the benefits of including sustainability at the design stage rather than trying to squeeze it in later.

With an understanding of how to include sustainability issues into the concept stage design process for a new operation, at both the macro process level (mining, processing, remediation etc) as well as the micro level (coal washing process, copper leaching process etc) and a solid grasp of the data that will need to be captured, mining companies can begin to plan for future reporting requirements.

Greening the Mining Industry – Part 1

Comment by Dennis Franklin

Introduction

For the last 100 years, the mining industry has been responding to changing community attitudes about the environment and sustainability. The considerable interest and debate around the globe on climate change means proactive action is very important, In this article I hope to highlight some of those impacts, and in later follow up articles, I will discuss impacts and responses in more detail. I won’t reproduce all of the work that is being published, but I will point to some of the emerging trends and insights into the role and contribution of Information Technology (IT). In particular, I’ll be highlighting some of the areas where IT can help to support the industry’s response and management of “sustainability”.

Today, not a single project can proceed without an understanding of its impacts on the environment. Now the growing community interest on a global scale means that the mining industry, indeed all industries, need to understand their specific and general impacts on the global environment. The industry’s contribution is through emissions resulting from the mining process, and through the production of raw materials that contribute to the main causes of global emissions. Legislation to minimise those impacts is already being enacted or drafted in many jurisdictions. Even though the mining industry is an important contributor to the economy and our lifestyles, it is, by its very nature, an industry whose emissions will be subject to increased scrutiny.

Where are the impacts across the life cycle of a mine?

Most of the recent press on environmental impacts is about the generation of greenhouse enhancing gases. The main contributors here are Carbon Dioxide (CO2), Methane, and Nitrous Oxide . These contributions are different at different stages of the life cycle of a mine.

The use of fuels, power, and water and the possible introduction of contaminants have impacts that exist across the whole life-cycle. The obvious response to all of this is to use those resources more efficiently and so use less of them. Optimising mine operations through smart design during the concept and pre-feasibility phases of a project can produce significant offsets.

Ensuring that new technologies in mining equipment which lead to reduced fuel usage, more effective tyre wear, and automation and optimisation of their use through fleet management can deliver significant whole-of-life cost savings and can reduce carbon emissions per ton of product. Just as the public are moving towards energy efficiency in their homes through the use of energy saving lighting and appliances, so the mining industry can reduce its energy usage through smart selection of equipment and consumables.

The Build Phase

Perhaps the best time to affect the life-cycle impacts of anything is during the design stage. Minimising the embodied impacts of building a new mine can best be addressed during design. For example, the production of concrete has relatively low embodied energy (energy used to produce the material) but it tends to be used in large quantities . On the other hand, concrete production produces up to 3000 kg/tonne of CO2 and so the carbon contribution is significant.

In domestic applications, however, both of these issues can be traded off against the benefits that concrete slabs can provide. Good design turns concrete slabs into heat sinks that reduce the need for power usage for heating and cooling. So while the interactions are complex, there is a case for good design turning an initial high contribution to environmental impacts into a long term beneficial outcome.

Another example is the use of an in-pit crusher and conveyor to offset the needs for a large diesel truck fleet in an open pit operation. Emissions from the extra trucks is much greater that the carbon footprint of the conveyor system.

The same is true for many other aspects of mine design, mine planning and mining process design where a detailed understanding of the environmental impacts could contribute to a better long term outcome.

The Operate Phase

Good design can go a long way to minimising impacts from operational processes but there are ways to improve existing operations without major capital upgrades. These include better power management, optimising algorithms for mobile equipment, and almost any application of Lean Manufacturing techniques for reducing wasteful effort in the production processes.

The more significant issue during the operational phase of a mining operation is the end-user impact of the raw materials being produced. The obvious example is coal, the burning of which contributes a significant amount of CO2 to the atmosphere. While the argument about whether anthropogenic CO2 is the cause of climate change is controversial, the industry needs to take a position on this issue simply because the political landscape requires it. Besides, any rational approach to risk management would dictate the need to act on the risk anyway, regardless of the likelihood of the risk, simply because the size of the projected global impacts is huge.

The responses to the liberation of CO2 to the environment by burning coal and other carbon fuels tend to be technological. Now, many are researching processes that capture liberated CO2 and turn it into a form that can be stored for long periods, for instance Geo-sequestration. Sequestration seeks to inject CO2 back into the geological strata to remove it from the short-term carbon cycle. Research into these technologies is in its infancy, but most large mining companies and most governments are contributing funds to the research. Another approach is to offset emissions by parallel activities that remove CO2 from the atmosphere, such as reforestation. In time, the establishment of carbon trading markets will allow nett emitters to offset against the activities of others.

The Retirement Phase

The retirement phase of a mining operation includes all of the activities discussed with the life-cycle but offers some interesting opportunities for offsetting emissions as the environmental repatriation activities are progressed. Where appropriate reforestation of mine sites is progressed, carbon offsets should be claimable. Here are also gains to be made through the optimal dismantling of the infrastructure and the reuse of equipment. One option is the mothballing of operations until a time when the technology advances have addressed the problem, similar to the practice of mothballing operations during times of low prices. The threat of this possibility is enough to give the mining industry a strong motivation to be an active participant of the technology development.

Conclusions

The issues at question for the mining industry are not trivial, and the interrelationships between the natural processes are complex. Most of the research on the impacts is detailed and well understood but the necessary responses that need to be taken are not yet well researched. Even so, there are many activities that can be commenced, not just because they make environmental sense, but because they can make business sense as well. Already, in other industries, innovations that reduce energy use are being instituted because they save money. Smart design can help to deliver both energy savings and operational benefits; they are worth doing for their own sake.

How IT can cut Carbon Emissions

Wed, 15 Oct 2008 09:15:00 PDT

The McKinsey Quarterly article of talks about - How IT can cut carbon emissions

Greenhouse gas emissions associated with making and powering the world’s computers and telecom networks are growing fast. Despite efforts by technology manufacturers and users to make these tools more energy efficient, rapid growth in demand for computing and communications—particularly in developing nations—is creating a big carbon footprint.
The good news is that information and communications technologies can reduce far more emissions than they generate.

I agree with all of the comments that they make. IT, even though it generates some greenhouse and other gases, displaces many many activities that are far more GhG producing. A perfectly legitimate approach to a companies GhG footprint issues maybe to increase the footprint of the IT Department and overall reduce the footprint of the company. Of course, doing both at the same time is a valid option as well.

We need to be very careful about goaling IT departments to lower their GhG footprint.