The gold mining industry has a near-term opportunity in terms of climate change mitigation and adaption, simultaneously contributing to decarbonisation, World Gold Council (WGC) market relations head John Mulligan said during a climate change and mining-focused Web discussion on November 10.
He urged miners to be “somewhat more realistic” when taking climate issues and the impact of local climate strategies into account, as implementing the latter “on the ground” requires greater climate-consciousness.
With the global mining industry still “barely early stage” on the path to addressing climate change and mitigation, as well as the pathway and risk to achieving net zero, Mulligan said there was an opportunity in near-term risks.
Looking forward, he explained that miners need to look at the projected impact, but noted that the gold mining industry, in particular, was in “a relatively positive space” to be able to contribute to decarbonisation, specifically that of energy and electricity.
While specific details of this opportunity were not given during Mulligan’s presentation, he did aver that this was “not just a case of shifting away from fossil fuels”, but rather should be considered as potentially contributing to Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) seven – ensuring that everyone has access to affordable, reliable and modern energy services by 2030.
“We’re talking about bringing communities that are either off-grid or wholly dependent on fossil fuels for any energy generation. We’re talking about bringing electricity to those communities, [and this electricity will be] decoupled from emissions, to some extent, which allows [these companies] to have the sustainable development impacts that we see with electricity consumption [but] without the emissions profile,” he elaborated as to what initial steps would look like.
Should the gold mining industry catalyse and stimulate this opportunity, Mulligan believes it to be “a very substantial positive impact” through not only delivering decarbonisation objectives, but also “extending classroom times, removing polluting fuels from the cooking process and enabling people to preserve food stuffs”.
With this marked opportunity for the sector on the horizon, he added that initial steps have been taken through the introduction of microgrids, based on renewables, though hybrid energy solutions also allow for both energy security and a cleaner energy source.
“When you start to consider that as the opportunity, the question is then ‘does the industry embrace the opportunity’, which is a key question because it is early stages,” Mulligan noted.