Mining can retake investor darling status by going green – Frandsen

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Mining Weekly

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JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – The taking of clear sustainability steps can make mining the darling of the investor community once again. Mining cannot participate in anything that leaves the world a worse place and needs to be cognisant of what it takes to have a licence to operate. Mining must have a smaller carbon footprint, use less water and communicate better about the raw materials it provides that are essential for climate-friendly electrification and a greener future. Pallinghurst Group managing partner and co-founder Arne Frandsen made these points in a Zoom interview with Mining Weekly, while also speaking as chairperson of: South Africa’s Sedibelo Platinum Mines, the mining company that is about to implement the ultra-low-energy Kell technology at its Pilanesberg Platinum Mine, in North West; and Canada’s Nouveau Monde Graphite, the Toronto-listed miner that is on its way to becoming the country’s first all-electric openpit operator at the Saint-Michel-des-Saints operation, in Quebec. (Also watch attached Creamer Media video.) Kell is a partnership between South Africa’s State-owned Industrial Development Corporation (IDC), Lifezone and Sedibelo Platinum Mines and Pallinghurst’s South African interests also take in the Northern Cape’s Tshipi mine, which is South Africa’s largest exporter of manganese, and Quebec’s Nemaska Lithium, a battery-grade lithium hydroxide asset. “We need to make the mining industry a responsible and forward-looking segment of the economy. Only then will mining retake its position as the darling of the investment community,” Frandsen said. In South Africa, the company is also: considering converting to renewable energy at Pilanesberg, something that could also occur at Tshipi; and aspiring to use as little carbon as possible to mine platinum group metals (PGMs), which are themselves sustainable metals that lower the vehicle emission levels on the roads of all the major cities of the world. In Canada, the company is: 100% hydropowered and taking steps to become a net zero user of water; and planting trees on specially bought carbon-catchment forest land around the mine to lower carbon levels and offset employee transport that may not yet be electric. “It’s a clear mission and I’m boringly consistent. What I say as the chairman in Canada, I also say as the chairman in South Africa, for Sedibelo. If we can demonstrate to the automakers that we’re extracting PGMs using as little carbon as possible, we’ll again be sitting in the front row of the class,” said Frandsen, who wants to ward off a possible future of investors deciding that “it’s not okay to burn tonnes and tonnes of coal in order to process platinum”, a reference to the current smelting of PGMs and the overwhelming reliance on coal-fired electricity. As has been pointed out by Lifezone director and Kell developer Keith Liddell, South Africa’s current PGMs smelting and refining requires 5 000 GWh of Eskom power support a year. In the hypothetical case of Kell replacing the current pyrometallurgical processes, nearly 4 000 GWh a year could be returned to the South African power pool – virtually the capacity of the new Medupi power station, which is the eighth-largest coal-fired power station in the world. “The IDC has been extremely supportive of Kell and it’s wonderful to see the South African government, through the IDC, committing to a greener future, and Kell is really that. Just think of it, Sedibelo will be using maybe 18% of the electricity compared to the conventional smelting and refining. That’s already an 82% saving. If you put that into how many tonnes of coal we’re not going to burn, this is very important,” said Frandsen. “Everything we do in life cannot have a zero carbon footprint but we can minimise it and if there is an alternative – and Kell is a proven, viable alternative – I think it is upon us to do so. “You asked first how the mining industry can be the darling of the inve...