Providing Responsibly Sourced Copper for the Energy Transition

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By Paul Ward, Anglo American Executive Head of Marketing, Base Metals

Original Link: Leadership view: Providing responsibly sourced copper for the energy transition | Anglo American

 

A successful transition to a more sustainable energy mix will be one with copper at its heart. Fully seizing the opportunity offered by the switch to clean energy will require record quantities of this malleable, durable and reusable metal.

The International Copper Association estimates that nearly 28 million tonnes of copper are used annually, with most applications taking advantage of copper’s superior electrical and thermal conductivity properties. The rest is used in construction, transport and other sectors, such as consumer goods. Most crucially, copper plays a key role in the transition to a decarbonized economy and in improving living standards for the world’s population.

By 2040, the copper industry is expected to double in size. Producers are faced with a range of challenges linked to meeting growing copper demand while providing all the guarantees of responsible and sustainable production that society has come to expect from the copper sector.

This complexity highlights the importance of new projects, such as Anglo American’s Quellaveco Mine, which is due to commence production in 2022. The mine is expected to deliver an average of 300,000 tonnes per annum of copper production in its first 10 years of operation. Located in Moquegua, Peru’s most established copper producing region, the project is one of the largest undeveloped copper deposits in the world and has a current projected reserve life of 30 years.

Anglo American’s approach to sustainability goes beyond compliance with mining law or regulatory requirements, comprising mutually reinforcing elements that transform the way its stakeholders experience its business. Anglo American looks not only to the physical product or volumes it supplies but also to the company’s more intangible qualities, such as the carbon footprint and the guarantees of responsible sourcing and production.

In its quest to build a sustainable business for the future, Anglo American is guided by its purpose of “re-imagining mining to improve people’s lives,” responding to the many demands facing society today and putting the company’s stakeholders firmly at the center of its strategy.

Anglo American’s Sustainable Mining Plan, introduced in 2018 to drive business efficiencies, resilience and agility, is designed to tackle many of today’s most pressing challenges—both environmental and social—in alignment with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. The plan is built around three major pillars: Healthy Environment, Thriving Communities and Trusted Corporate Leader.

The “Healthy Environment” pillar includes a number of ambitious decarbonization targets, culminating in reaching carbon neutrality across all operations by 2040. Switching to a greener energy supply is a key part of this journey. That is why Anglo American has closed deals with key energy providers to put the company on track to ensure 100 percent of its total energy demand in South America—including all our copper operations—is met by renewable energy sources starting in 2022.

The company also sees technology and digitalization working hand in hand with sustainability. Anglo American’s FutureSmartMiningTM program utilizes innovation in service of a new way of mining, reducing environmental footprints and developing comprehensive frameworks to create truly sustainable and thriving communities. These outcomes are thanks to the company’s collaborative approach to regional economic development and ambitious global stretch goals.

Shaping a sustainable future for the copper industry, however, requires the company to also look at how metals reach the customers and how they are used further downstream in the value chain.

This includes a responsibility to do things differently than in the past, forging the right conversations with customers and partners centered on today’s demands, as well as on their expected needs for the future. It means looking at how the customers’ industries can serve society and the consumers in a sustainable and cost-effective way.

Anglo American aims to establish a flexible and responsive model that connects customers with the materials they need, as well as providing further tailored material solutions specifically designed around their evolving needs. To do this, Anglo American, in partnership with its customers and their own customers, are shaping an offering that channels the world’s increasing demand for essential metals and minerals into a requirement for transparent, ethical and sustainable value chains.

One of the objectives of our Sustainable Mining Plan is to gain independent assurance by 2025 for the sustainability credentials of the company’s managed operations through independent and globally recognized standards, such as the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance (IRMA). IRMA, of which Anglo American is a founding board member, provides third-party certification for social and environmental performance at mine sites globally. Seven Anglo American managed operations have either completed IRMA assessments or are currently in the process of being assured.

In March 2022, Anglo American’s managed copper operations in Chile—the Los Bronces and El Soldado mining operations and the Chagres smelter—were awarded the Copper Mark, the assurance standard for responsible copper, developed to demonstrate the copper industry’s commitment to both the green energy transition and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

These efforts translate into a portfolio that supports Anglo American’s customers in meeting their own sustainability commitments and aspirations, while at the same time helping the company redefine industry standards and respond to evolving consumer and societal expectations for responsibly sourced products.

 

About Anglo American

Anglo American is a leading global mining company, and its products are the essential ingredients in almost every aspect of modern life. Its portfolio of world-class competitive operations, with a broad range of future development options, provides many of the future-enabling metals and minerals for a cleaner, greener, more sustainable world that meet the fast-growing, everyday demands of billions of consumers. With people at the heart of its business, Anglo American uses innovative practices and the latest technologies to discover new resources and to mine, process, move and market its future-enabling products to its customers—safely and sustainably.

As a responsible producer of diamonds (through De Beers), copper, platinum group metals, premium quality iron ore and metallurgical coal for steelmaking, and nickel—with crop nutrients in development—Anglo American is committed to being carbon neutral across its operations by 2040. More broadly, the company’s Sustainable Mining Plan commits Anglo American to a series of stretching goals to ensure it works toward a healthy environment, creating thriving communities and building trust as a corporate leader. Anglo American works together with its business partners and diverse stakeholders to unlock enduring value from precious natural resources for the benefit of the communities and countries in which it operates, for society as a whole and for its shareholders. Anglo American is re-imagining mining to improve people’s lives.

New study confirming potential of wastewater heat recovery

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Wastewater Heat Recovery (WWHR) technology was identified as the most promising emerging technology for unlocking the under-addressed potential for reducing the energy needed for water heating

 

A new study, commissioned by the European Copper Institute at the University of Innsbruck and the Passive House Institute, provides an overview of the planned energy and climate saving targets in the area of domestic hot water production and proposes target-oriented solutions to solving these challenges. The persistent energy need for hot water is critically highlighted as a promising category for achieving energy savings beyond the current EU levels.

After extensive research, Waste-Water Heat-Recovery (WWHR) technology was identified as the most promising emerging technology for unlocking the under-addressed potential for reducing the energy needed for water heating. In particular, shower heat-exchangers offer a cost-effective way of utilizing otherwise wasted heat for preheating cold fresh water,  reducing the temperature span covered by the water heater. Numerous global studies show that WWHR technologies offer a significant saving potential of “energy need” for domestic hot water by up to 50 percent, especially for showering. This leads to savings on “delivered energy” of up to 40 percent for water heating, including system inefficiencies such as distribution and storage losses. These results are in line with the laboratory and in-situ measurements of the University of Innsbruck.

The unique advantage of WWHR is its simplicity and robust construction, free of moving parts, achieving high thermal energy savings without compromising on user comfort. The research shows that WWHR systems are already technically mature at product level and officially recognized and regulated in a growing number of European and global markets. In fact, in Europe, the trend in developing new WWHR techniques is now reflected on a global scale. Based on investment and maintenance costs, the price for each kWh that a given WWHR system recovers during its lifetime could be calculated. This so-called “price of energy saved” is a calculation of a fixed energy price for the next decades, while using the WWHR. In conjunction with an already highly efficient heat pump, the best value is as low as 0.06 €/kWh, which is nearly a fourth of the average electricity price of 0.232 €/kWh in the EU area in Q1 of 2021.

The cost-effectiveness of WWHR is best in climates with cold ground temperatures and in cases where showers are used extensively, such as in tourism, the wellness sector, and the hotel industry. Nevertheless, even an average European household will save around a €100 in annual costs with WWHR.

At the European level, the WWHR itself is theoretically capable of surpassing the energy saving targets planned in the “Fit for 55” climate action in the hot water sector, if all buildings are equipped accordingly, as outlined in this study. If between 2022 and 2030, every second renovated or newly constructed building in Europe were equipped with the WWHR system, 35.8 TWh of energy and 6,6 Megatons of CO2e emissions could be saved.

Although WWHR has been a well-proven technology for decades in some countries, it is still unknown in most European regions. Further action, particularly the creation of a European legal framework, an information campaign, the training of professionals and the granting of subsidies, is needed to unlock the full energy saving potential and to accelerate the adaptation of this promising, sustainable technology into practice.

Download the study: The potential of WASTE WATER HEAT RECOVERY SYSTEMS in reducing the  energy demand for water heating in the EU in a cost-efficient way