The electricity-producing potential of the sector is just as stark. Assuming an average turbine height of 90m, researchers at the University of Michigan speculate that onshore and offshore wind generation could produce a bewildering 872,000TWh of electricity annually. To put that into perspective, total global energy consumption is a mere 24,000TWh.

Once you factor in the economic benefits of the wind sector – and that it theoretically buffers countries from the vagaries of the global fossil fuels market – and you can see why EU nations are on course to bolster the bloc’s offshore wind capacity 25-fold by the end of the decade.

Yet, what comes up – it goes without saying – must also come down: and here policymakers and turbine manufacturers have shown distinctly less enthusiasm. Especially for offshore turbines – battered by waves and air, and challenging to maintain – there’s a distinct lack of clarity about what to do when their life cycle comes to an end, even as the typical wind farm can only function for about a quarter of a century.

Faced with the looming prospect of rows of crumbling turbines, legislators are belatedly starting to reflect on what can be done. In the first place, their problems are made much worse by a lack of research. Beyond some honourable exceptions, there is a concerning lack of knowledge over what removing turbines will do to the local marine environment – environments, remember, that were already altered when the turbines were first installed.

One solution, it appears, could involve renovating ageing turbines to give them a second lease of life. Another – though perhaps ironic for an industry built on sustainability – could be learning from how the oil and gas sector has approached decommissioning. There are even some suggestions that, for the good of the planet, old turbines are left as they are, providing shelter to underwater creatures even as their energy-producing days are done.

All for nothing?

It’s hard to overstate how quickly the problem of offshore decommissioning is going to increase. Consider the numbers. In principle, offshore machines should function properly for between 20–25 years, though worn-down components can sometimes hasten that estimate.

We must also factor in the wealth of turbine construction we’ve seen over recent decades – despite the challenging economic conditions, Europe still installed 4% more turbines in 2022 than the year before, equivalent to 19GW of new installed wind capacity, even as the Global Wind Energy Council estimates that climate goals require the construction of four times the current number each year.

With this in mind, it’s not hard to see why Dr Antony Knights says that turbine decommissioning is going to become “a pretty big problem” over the years ahead. That’s especially true, explains the associate professor in marine ecology at the University of Plymouth, in places like the North Sea. The UK may have been ahead of the game when it came to exploiting wind energy, but that equally means it’ll be among the first countries to deal with what comes next.

This looming crisis is hardly helped by the fact that the sector has struggled to plan ahead. In part, this is an issue of research. Beyond a couple of exceptions, notably in Northern Europe and the Gulf of Mexico, scientists have failed to fully consider what decommissioning would mean for the natural environment offshore turbines leave behind. At the same time, however, scientists and other stakeholders can build up a body of evidence based on another offshore industry, albeit one not traditionally associated with the green transition.

“Although decommissioning in the wind energy industry differs from that in the oil and gas and nuclear sectors, eventual decommissioning of offshore wind turbines will involve environmental considerations similar to those of other man-made structures,” explains Dr Michaela Schratzberger, science director at the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (CEFAS), a government body that works with scientists and other stakeholders to build the evidence base in support of decommissioning decisions.

Yet, if they can offer plenty of pointers – including the need to design structures in a way that make them easy to dismantle, as well as the importance of securing the skills of decommissioning experts – oil and gas installations also pose challenges for turbines.

Fundamentally, this is a question of regulation, in particular a rule called OSPAR 98/3. Applying across the northeast Atlantic, involving 15 regional governments and encompassing both wind turbines and petroleum installations, it requires what the regulation describes as the ‘complete removal’ of most man-made structures from the sea.

Balancing acts

That might sound fine in theory. Why, after all, wouldn’t you want to return the marine environment to a pristine condition – especially in a sector predicated on sustainability like wind? In practice, however, such draconian rules may actually not be the best way forward.

Put it like this: the moment a turbine’s installed, the local environment is transformed already, and not necessary for the worse. Sea snails, algae and marine plants are all drawn to the turbines, notes Knights, explaining that some turbines mimic the ecosystems of rocky shores. From there, he continues, seabirds can find a home among offshore structures, as can certain species of fish.

This point is supported by the numbers: researchers in Germany have found that a typical offshore turbine can support up to four tonnes of shellfish, a bounty that’s sure to attract crabs and fish, themselves the natural prey of seals.

And while there are certainly downsides to transforming the sea in this way – the fact that invasive species can also be drawn to human-made sites, Knights concedes, means they’re always “a double-edged sword” – is it really worth disrupting nature two times over?

Whatever you believe, the persistence of OSPAR 98/3 means that any attempt at thoughtful discussion is immediately quashed. At least, this is true where that particular rule is enforced. For while northern Europeans are obliged to decommission turbines from generator to blade, their US cousins are far less constrained.

More to the point, Schratzberger explains that experience shows that a more holistic approach to turbine afterlife can be successful. As she puts it: “In some parts of the world, particularly in the US, alternative strategies such as allowing relocation of infrastructural components – generally jackets – to create artificial reefs, or repurposing them in other ways, have been allowed often with considerable success.”

Off the coast of California, for instance, the decommissioned Platform Holly oil rig plays host to fish, crabs and starfish. Other exhausted platforms in the Gulf of Mexico, have become popular diving and fishing spots. Once again borrowing from the petroleum sector, meanwhile, there’s little reason wind turbines couldn’t enjoy a similar legacy.

Not that gentle neglect is the only option here either. With timber an increasingly popular construction material for new turbines – specialist laminated wood manufacturer Modvion partners with industry giants like Vestas – we could theoretically see turbines disintegrate almost entirely by natural means.

At the other end of the spectrum, Knights is an enthusiastic supporter of renovating older turbines, giving them a second lease of life, and neatly putting off decommissioning worries a while longer. There are signs, in fact, that this is happening already. As far back as 2018, for instance, a Danish company successfully replaced five turbines near the Swedish coastline, doubling the site’s energy output even as the old towers and foundations were preserved.

On a mission

There’s no single answer to offshore decommissioning, and where you come down is almost a matter of philosophy. Pointing out that the planet is losing biodiversity at an unprecedented rate, largely thanks to climate change, Knights argues that “we’re going to trade off” the health of the planet as a whole with that of those of specific ecosystems.

By the time you factor in the varying costs and benefits of decommissioning turbines themselves, you end up with a field that’s deeply complex – and one with the potential to upset someone or other. As Schratzberger says: “A decommissioning strategy that benefits some stakeholders may be detrimental to others, for instance, a strategy that benefits fishermen may undermine some conservation objectives.”

Yet, if just exactly how turbines end their days seems destined to remain disputed, industry insiders are at least becoming more conscious of the problem. In 2021, the Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) Catapult, a British industry group, announced a five-year programme that brought together academics, manufacturers and policymakers to reflect on how decommissioning could be streamlined. That’s shadowed by a flurry of other research, not least by Knights and his colleagues, which altogether is contributing to a sector due to enjoy a CAGR of 13.46% through 2026.

Even the infamous OSPAR 98/3 ruling could eventually disappear, with a paper from 2018 by the University of Technology in Sydney, Australia, finding that over 90% of the industry experts surveyed advocate a case-by-case approach to offshore structure removal – rather than the blanket policy currently in force. All the while, thousands of turbines continue to age, even as what happens to them remains decidedly unclear.

This article first appeared in World Wind Technology magazine.

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Currently, there are almost 200 offshore wind farms operating globally, with China, the UK, Taiwan, Denmark and the Netherlands leading the field. The largest, Hornsea 2, is located 90km off the UK’s Yorkshire coast, consisting of 165 Siemens Gamesa 8MW wind turbines and an energy capacity of 1.32GW.

The UK’s upcoming Dogger Bank wind farm is set to eclipse Hornsea 2, however, when it is fully operational in 2025, with a total of 277 turbines producing an energy capacity of 3.6GW.

These massive wind farms are both quite recently developed, but others are far older. The lifespan of an offshore wind turbine is somewhere between 25 and 35 years, due in part to the atmospheric conditions they face, the pressure put on the materials and the wear and tear associated with its exposure to salt water. As a result, turbines require regular inspections and maintenance, requiring workers to travel out to sea and carry out potentially hazardous tasks under challenging conditions.

Indeed, there were 225 high-potential incidents reported within the UK’s offshore wind sector in 2022 alone, according to a report by G+, the Energy Institute’s health and safety organisation for the offshore wind sector. In total, more than 868 incidents and injuries were reported that year, with 325 taking place on a vessel, 298 on a turbine and 185 occurring onshore. With this in mind, stakeholders in offshore wind have begun to take notice of recent developments in robotics and automation, suggesting that a better solution might well be out there.

Reducing risk from the safety of land

For offshore wind turbines, all aspects of their life cycle – from construction through operation, maintenance and decommissioning – require workers to travel out to these remote sites for inspection or servicing. Transporting heavy and bulky objects; installing components; the volatile weather conditions and their impact on timeframe availability; operations conducted at dangerous heights; the flooding of components and areas; and changes to platform stability all present unique risks and challenges to workers.

Indeed, that’s before you even begin factoring in human error, as workers may have to deal with poor planning; being assigned the wrong tools; tiredness and fatigue; improper or delayed maintenance; and any number of other issues. Of course, these issues are frequently only identified when a worker is already on-site and will then require either the maintenance vessel returning to the harbour or another vessel being sent out to the site – both solutions waste considerable time in the process.

While not a solution to all of these challenges, the offshore wind industry has seen significant developments in recent years in the field of robotics and automation, as companies look to reduce the demands and strain placed on their human workers. It’s long been clear to the industry that, when it comes to so-called ‘dull, dirty and dangerous tasks’, removing humans from these high-risk environments when possible will benefit not just their bottom line but also the health and safety of their personnel.

In July 2021, the Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) Catapult – the UK’s leading technology and innovation research centre for offshore renewable energy – released a paper looking into the myriad benefits that robotics could offer the sector. Titled ‘Quantifying the impact of robotics in offshore wind’, the report is one of several ‘Industry Insight’ studies, commissioned as part of the Offshore Wind Innovation Hub (OWIH). The authors analysed various cost-reduction opportunities that robotic applications could provide in the operations and maintenance (O&M) of offshore wind farms.

Among the many aspects of robotics examined in the paper, the authors noted that recent developments in offshore wind turbine inspection have seen the introduction of hybrid unmanned surface vessels (USVs) combined with electric remotely operated vehicles (eROVs). The use of these systems in the offshore wind was a natural progression from the oil and gas industry, where they have been common practice for subsea operations since the 1980s – though, obviously, their electrification is a more recent addition.

Today, eROVs used in the offshore wind sector have seen a small level of automation integrated into their operations, but to date are typically tethered systems that are remotely controlled by personnel in support vessels on the surface. Whether automated or remotely controlled, of course, eROVS offer great potential to reduce risk and improve health and safety in this area, capable of performing maintenance and repair tasks on offshore wind turbines without a single human being physically present.

As the ORE Catapult paper notes, eROVs do not require hydraulic systems and are easier to deploy from surface vessels, allowing vessels to be unmanned. Since space for personnel is not required, they can be designed more efficiently so they are therefore smaller and considerably more fuel efficient, helping reduce carbon emissions.

Similarly, combined USV-eROV platforms offer further value as they can be controlled from onshore remote operation centres – essentially allowing for remote control of operations from the safety of land. This comes with its own challenges; remote long-range connectivity is yet to fully realise its potential, but developments in this area are already underway and will improve significantly in the short-to-medium term.

Put into practice

One such eROV platform is being developed by researchers from Heriot-Watt University and Imperial College London, working with the National Robotarium, the UK’s leading AI and robotics centre, in partnership with Fugro, a leading geodata specialist. The Underwater Intervention for Offshore Renewable Energies (UNITE) project has received £1.4m in funding, partly from the UK’s Engineering and Physical Science Research Council, and seeks to remove the need for crewed support vessels during maintenance procedures.

The UK has over 2,650 offshore wind turbines as of 2023, including those at Hornsea and Dogger Bank, with thousands more planned before 2050. Each turbine typically requires an average of up to three maintenance check-ups per year, which increases as turbines age and require higher levels of maintenance to stay fully operational.

Traditional maintenance methods for offshore wind turbines require vessels to transport teams of trained divers and ship-based crews on-site to manually inspect individual turbines – or, more recently, to deploy remotely operated robots to conduct the inspection and repair processes. This all translates into hundreds of thousands of man-hours committed to crewed maintenance missions each year, which is ultimately inefficient, costly and environmentally unfriendly, all while presenting a safety risk to workers.

The UNITE project is intended to support uncrewed and remotely operated vessels, developing autonomous and semi-autonomous eROVs capable of carrying out subsea inspection, maintenance and repair tasks – all while being deployed and controlled from an onshore site. Similarly, the project seeks to develop technologies to enable robots to create more accurate subsea terrain maps, while exploring how these robots autonomously interact with underwater structures during volatile conditions like changing currents or rough seas.

“We’re only a generation away from our obligation to deliver on our net zero promises by 2050 and 2045 in Scotland, so can’t afford to let the challenges faced by the offshore renewables sector slow down the construction and operation of essential, green energy assets like wind turbines,” said Professor Yvan Petillot, academic co-lead at the National Robotarium and principal investigator of the UNITE project, in a June 2023 press release.

“Remote inspection and repair using robotic systems deployed in the field and controlled from shore is within our grasp. The long-term ambition is for crewless boats to be able to do this autonomously without direct human control based on a predetermined maintenance cycle – critical if we’re to see the widespread adoption of robotics in the rapidly expanding offshore wind sector.”

First fully remote inspection of an offshore wind farm

In that same press release, Mark Bruce, global product manager at Fugro, made note of the potential that eROVs offer the offshore wind sector. “As the expansion and influence of marine robotics stretches ever further across the marine industry, we are committed to leading the industry’s remote and autonomous revolution,” he said. “Key to this is overcoming the challenges of remote operations by increasing our awareness and autonomy level in the sub-sea environment.”

Fugro, while part of the UNITE project, is developing a number of eROVs projects of its own. In April 2023, the company performed what it claimed as the first fully remote inspection of offshore wind farm facilities at the Aberdeen offshore wind farm in the UK North Sea, also referred to as the European Offshore Wind Development Centre.

Supported by funding from Vattenfall and the ORE Catapult, the survey involved one of Fugro’s Blue Essence USVs and a Blue Volta eROV. Designed to be able to stay out at sea for up to two weeks without the need for refuelling, the Blue Essence line was the first USV to receive approval from the UK’s Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) to operate fully remotely with an eROV during its inspection routine.

The Blue Volta eROV, meanwhile, was successfully launched and recovered remotely from Fugro’s operations centre in Aberdeen. Inspecting wind turbine structures to assess their safety and stability, the vessel also carried a deepwater multibeam echosounder sensor on its hull, while enabled Fugro to collect data to generate a detailed map of the surrounding seabed.

Beyond the work carried out by the National Robotorium and Fugro, similar eROV projects are also in works by groups like Oceaneering International and Saab Seaeye. Both offer robust and advanced ROV and eROV systems for offshore energy operations, focused on increased autonomy and enhanced data gathering and analysis while improving safety and reliability in demanding environments.

Ultimately, all industry players are united under one belief: that current conditions at offshore wind turbines pose an unnecessary risk to workers, and that eROV technology is poised to take these tasks over. If they improve maintenance downtime while also being more cost-effective, then that just sweetens the deal. However, with more and more offshore turbines set for construction over the coming decades, those latter points may well prove just as enticing.

This article first appeared in World Wind Technology magazine.

The post How electric remotely operated vehicles can transform maintenance and repair tasks on offshore wind turbines appeared first on NS Energy.

This pace of development is glacially slow, especially set against the more ambitious targets that government advisers have been calling for. According to a report by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), it would take 4,700 years at the present rate for the nation to reach its desired onshore wind capacity. By contrast, had annual build-out rates matched the average pre-ban level, an extra 1.7GW would have been added by 2022. That’s enough to power 1.5 million homes over the winter.

Cameron’s ban, which was controversial even at the time, has remained unpopular among renewable energy advocates, a cross-party group of MPs, and a sizeable proportion of the British public. So, when news broke that Rishi Sunak’s government had finally rescinded the ban, it seemed like there was reason to be hopeful.

“To increase our energy security and develop a cleaner, greener economy, we are introducing new measures to allow local communities to back onshore wind power projects,” said Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove on 5 September 2023, announcing the decision.

Claire Coutinho, the energy secretary, added that onshore wind had a key role to play in the UK’s energy mix, and that “these changes will help speed up the delivery of projects where local communities want them”. Of course, it should be noted that the ban and its amendment apply to England specifically, and that the planning process has long been more permissive in Scotland and Wales.

Despite the supposed boost to onshore wind, many commentators were quick to remark that the changes don’t go far enough. Shadow Climate Secretary Ed Miliband said the government had “bottled it again”, while Greenpeace UK’s policy director, Doug Parr, claimed, “developers will continue to face uncertainty over the planning process and be beholden to quixotic decisions by local councils”.

James Robottom, head of onshore wind at RenewableUK, argues that this was less a U-turn and more a “slight softening at the edges”, in actuality. “It’s crazy that it’s easier to build a waste incinerator than an onshore wind farm,” he says. “In terms of what a perfect planning framework would look like, I don’t think we know yet, but we just need onshore wind to be treated like any other technology.”

Going for the small fix

To understand what has changed, we need to go back to 2015 when the moratorium was introduced. Despite pledging to lead the “greenest government ever”, Cameron clamped down hard on the onshore wind in his 2015 election manifesto. Claiming that people were “fed up” with “unsightly” wind farms, the then-prime minister ended subsidies to onshore wind – a support measure not reinstated till 2020.

He also added a footnote into the planning guidance that created two new barriers to onshore wind development in England. The first was around planning processes for local authorities. The second stipulated that the impact on local communities needed to be “fully addressed”. In practice, this meant a single objection from a local resident would be enough to stop the project in its tracks.

“The footnote applies to any farm of one turbine or more that’s above 11m, which is tiny,” says Robottom. “Rather than removing the footnote and treating onshore wind like any other infrastructure, Rishi Sunak’s government has kept the two hurdles but lowered them slightly.”

The new policy framework does allow for a little more flexibility. There are a few more ways that the local authority can identify areas for development, while a proposed incentive scheme will ensure that local people see the benefits. Meanwhile, individual residents have lost their power to quash a project.

“The wording has changed from an ambiguous ‘fully addressed’ to an equally ambiguous ‘appropriately addressed’,” says Robottom. “That removes one person being able to block it, but it leaves it open to interpretation. Investor interest is still basically zero in England because if you keep those hurdles there it’s risky for developers.”

Joshua Emden, a senior research fellow at the IPPR, agrees that the reworded footnote is unlikely to be enough to reassure investors. Developers are much more likely to turn to EU countries in which the planning framework is more supportive.

“The wording still requires councils to make a decision one way or another,” he says. “If you are a wind developer, there’s always a risk the council will be able to scupper your project very easily.

Onshore wind is still considered special – the threshold for denying an application is much lower than it is for other technologies.”

The winds of change

From one perspective, the onshore wind ban and its repercussions may seem rather puzzling. Onshore wind is one of the cheapest forms of energy available and one of the quickest to deploy. As a low-carbon technology, it could play a leading role in England’s journey towards net zero. It could also heighten energy security and cut consumers’ energy bills during a cost-of-living crisis.

Of course, it is not without its detractors. David Cameron was trying to appeal to voters in rural Tory heartlands, many of whom viewed turbines as an eyesore. Onshore projects also tend to attract some pushback from conservationists, who worry about their effects on ecosystems.

However, polling has consistently shown that the UK public are in favour of onshore wind. A 2022 poll from RenewableUK found that 76% support building renewable energy projects in their local area. In that same survey, only 16% of Tory voters said they thought the block on onshore wind should remain. Similarly, a 2021 government study found that 80% of people support onshore wind and only 4% oppose it. Some Conservative MPs, aware of which direction voter sentiment is tracking, have been seeking to revoke the ban since the outset.

“There’s a perception that the opposition is greater than it actually is,” says Robottom. “Onshore wind is very popular and I don’t think I’ve spoken to anyone from a younger generation who doesn’t back it.”

When Rishi Sunak became prime minister in October 2022, he indicated he would keep the ban in place. However, a rebellion from his own backbenchers – including former Prime Minister Liz Truss – two months later drove him to soften his stance. He set up a consultation to end the ban, promising that the planning framework would be updated by the end of April. When April came and went and nothing changed, the same group of MPs piled on the pressure.

The amendment was drawn up by Sir Alok Sharma, a Conservative MP and the former president of Cop26, and supported by a group of senior Tories. Unlike the Labour opposition, which has said it would remove all special planning requirements for onshore wind, the Tories have tried to appease those core anti-wind voters.

“I understand that some people would like […] for onshore wind to be treated like any other infrastructure,” said Sharma during a debate on the change to energy legislation on 5 September. “I get that, but we also have to recognise that it has been a contentious issue in the past, and it is important that we take communities with us on this journey.”

The road ahead

Emden would not dispute that community focus is important. As he points out, people need to feel like projects are happening with their blessing and engagement, rather than off the back of a cursory consultation. “You need to let people know what’s happening and give them opportunities to say where they might want sites to be, so they have a say in the process but don’t disrupt it,” he notes.

He thinks the new guidance might lead to more community energy projects, which don’t need such long pipelines of investment since they’re inherently local. That said, he thinks larger projects will still struggle to get off the ground. “The majority of the onshore wind we’re going to need will come from larger-scale wind farms and investors will probably still be cautious about the prospects,” he concludes.

Robottom maintains that the current planning system isn’t fit for purpose. A better system, he thinks, would ensure developers didn’t have to jump through unnecessary hoops. “There are important things you need to do at the siting of a wind farm, but they have to be proportionate to the scale of development. A single turbine that’s going to help a community power their homes has to be different from a 50-turbine wind farm,” he says.

By November 2023, two months after the rules were eased, England’s stagnant onshore wind market had failed to pick up pace. Not a single new application had been received, which the Guardian described as “a further sign that Rishi Sunak’s antigreen policy shift is driving investment abroad”.

“We aren’t an island when it comes to renewable energy,” points out Robottom. “There are other markets that exist – developers will go to Germany or Scotland, which are backing onshore wind. I’m hopeful things will change, but whether that will happen under the current administration, I’m not sure.”

This article first appeared in World Wind Technology magazine.

The post Time for England to bring down barriers around onshore wind development appeared first on NS Energy.

You might expect such an assertion to be contested, and indeed it was. In fact, the figures add weight to any opposition such talk garnered. In 2022, the sector installed 15GW in new wind farms across the EU, one-third more than 2021, according to Europe’s trade body, WindEurope. It also labels wind energy manufacturing as a “European success story”, supported by a large industrial ecosystem comprising 250 manufacturing facilities.

However, even WindEurope has acknowledged the challenges faced by the industry in recent years. “A combination of inflation and unhelpful government interventions in electricity markets is undermining investments in new wind farms,” it acknowledged in a press release in January 2023, adding that 2022 had been a difficult year for the supply chain, with stubbornly high inflation hitting turbine manufacturers and suppliers hard. The European Commission (EC) has also recognised those difficulties, leading President Ursula von der Leyen to announce a European Wind Power Action Plan that the EC says will ensure the energy transition goes “hand-in-hand with industrial competitiveness”.

Among the difficulties, according to the EC, are insufficient and uncertain demand; slow and complex permitting; lack of access to raw materials; high inflation and commodity prices; unsupportive design of national tenders; increased pressure from international competitors; and risks to the availability of a skilled workforce – an ominous list on the face of it.

It’s plan, though, welcomed as a “game-changer” by WindEurope, includes six action points: increased predictability and faster permitting; supporting member states to improve their auction design; the introduction of an innovation fund to speed up investment and financing; continued monitoring of potentially unfair trade practices from international competitors, taking action where necessary; a renewed focus on developing skills; and engagement with the sector to develop an EU Wind Charter to improve the enabling conditions for the industry to remain competitive.

But right now the sector is sluggish, as Jonas Wahlström, head of product management at ABB’s wind division, can attest to. Branding today’s market “very slow”, he says it takes a long time between decisions being made and the construction and eventual commencement of commercial operation – a nod to the comments made by the EC.

Big challenge, smaller solution

Aside from the current climate, wind is a market with great potential – one that ABB is eager to support. However, Wahlström accepts that costs for materials, as an example, have risen and this may be impacting decisions made by the industry and ABB’s customers.

It’s a proposition that isn’t without merit – after all, as wind turbines have got bigger, so too has the amount of raw materials required to build them. Highlighting this fact, the UK’s first conventional offshore wind farm – situated off the North Wales coast – boasted 2MW turbines; in 2023 the North Sea Dogger Bank wind farm, which when completed will be the world’s largest offshore facility at 3.6GW, is home to GE’s Haliade-X turbine. Standing at a quarter of a kilometre above the water’s surface, each of these turbines have an energy capacity of 13MW.

Wahlström believes part of the solution – and indeed the natural progression of components – to reducing costs is to optimise the integral parts of these increasingly large turbines. This, he argues, is where medium-voltage (MV) wind converters can thrive. MV wind converters, with typical voltage ranges of 3.3kV to 6.6kV, is an area that ABB has been working in since the 1980s, being one of the first developers for both wind and industrial applications.

Today, as wind turbines grow, and with the next generation expected to reach energy capacities of at least 20MW, MV wind converters are set to become increasingly integral for power conversion. They are an eye-catching alternative to low-voltage (LV) systems being used, helping to reduce currents and losses in generators, converters and cables. Although LV converters have been used in large offshore turbines, they pose challenges when used on some of today’s largest models. They increase the need for power components and ultimately the cost of turbines themselves, thanks to the larger size and weight of the nacelle, and come with concerns surrounding reliability in general.

It is, therefore, arguably the age of the MV wind converter. With the ability to help reduce size, weight and cabling, they provide higher operating voltages – meaning the drivetrain can work at lower currents, thus reducing the costs of cabling, switchgears and other components in the drivetrain. Wahlström says that for ABB, although it does manufacture a catalogue of other converters, both LV and MV, a 3.3kV converter currently ticks all the boxes; providing optimal performance while using the fewest components possible.

ABB’s MV wind converters also feature high-efficiency integrated gate-commutated thyristor (IGCT) technology. Originally developed by ABB, IGCT helps control high electric current and voltages seamlessly. Hinting that there might be further developments in coming months and years, as the supply chain works on enhancements such as the semiconductors, Wahlström says for now the 3.3kV converter is the benchmark.

However, he stresses, keeping components down to a figure that is “as low as possible” is key to ensuring they provide the best reliability, today and in the future. This, Wahlström adds, will be a compelling proposition for all parties – for cost, reliability and availability reasons. “The fewer components you have, the more likely it is that nothing will fail […] and the more possible it is to make a very compact and light converter,” he continues. This is where selecting the right semiconductor can drive the entire design process to deliver something “which fits into the industry as good as possible, from early on”.

Speaking more generally, MV wind converters offer an array of benefits for both turbine OEMs and its end users, the operators. OEMs, as Wahlström explains, can make smaller systems due to the increase in voltage, meaning the current goes down and it requires less copper and fewer cables. As a result, generators can be lighter and transformers smaller, making it easier to build a wind turbine.

Operating efficiently

“The second [benefit] is clearly efficiency,” Wahlström notes. The use of MV offers improved efficiency for the drivetrain and ultimately the entire turbine. “Therefore, turbine OEMs can build easier, smaller turbines – and get more power out of individual turbines.”

ABB also boasts that its IGCT technology components would likely continue operating far beyond the lifespan of the wind turbine itself. “You could say it’s an almost eternal component,” Wahlström declares. “The semiconductor has, practically speaking, no lifetime restrictions […] so it doesn’t need to be replaced during the [turbine’s] lifetime. This is, of course, a high-cost saving.” IGCT-based MV wind converters are also fuseless, instead using other inherent protection mechanisms further increases their reliability.

It seems they will likely become critical to today’s offshore wind sector, and that of tomorrow – if indeed, they haven’t already. As the demand for wind power grows, naturally increasing the demand for larger turbines, ABB’s next-generation MV wind converters – with ratings up to and even beyond 20MW – will deliver in the region of a 33% uplift in power, with a similar quantity of components as their lower power predecessors. Offering what the company describes as a significant improvement to grid stability thanks to their improved capability to handle higher power output and stabilise voltage and frequency fluctuations, wind farm operators could capitalise on the increased efficiency, reliability and profitability with a lower total cost of ownership.

Adding to this, Wahlström highlights the enhanced data collection and analysis capabilities of these newer technologies, an area that he says is growing in importance for ABB’s customers. MV wind converters are progressively capable of cloud connectivity, allowing enhanced operational oversight across individual turbines and entire fleets. This means operators and turbine OEMs “have all the data available to make the right decisions in the long term”, he says.

It seems the offshore wind industry has a bright future, full of huge potential, yet with increasingly small components. For now, though, as Europe fends off international competition, the ABBs of the continent are on a mission to offer products with a shore-side appeal – reliability, efficiency and cost savings.

This article first appeared in World Wind Technology magazine.

The post How medium-voltage converters can play key role in reducing costs of wind turbines appeared first on NS Energy.

But as you continue down the list of petroleum superpowers, past OPEC stalwarts like Saudi Arabia or Kuwait, you may spot a surprising name. Coming in as the 14th largest oil producer on Earth, just between Mexico and Qatar, is Norway. It’s hardly a nation of Stetsons, but oil and gas derricks off the North Sea provided the Norwegian exchequer with $140bn in 2022, representing roughly a quarter of the nation’s GDP.

If anything, this bounty is even more striking when you consider what Norway is known for internationally: being a quiet, modest nation, and one keenly supportive of environmental activism. Nor are stereotypes really necessary here.

In 2016, for instance, Oslo unveiled plans to go completely carbon-neutral by 2030, two decades earlier than originally scheduled. That’s shadowed in practice too: 99% of Norway’s domestic electricity needs are met by sustainable hydroelectric power, making use of the fjords and rivers so famed across Scandinavia.

But with all those oil and gas refineries remaining fundamental to the Norwegian economy – and funding a generous welfare state – how to weigh the country’s ambitious green targets with its geological endowment? One potential answer can be glimpsed in the chilly waters 85 miles off Norway’s coastline.

Here, at a site called Hywind Tampen, the Equinor energy giant has installed 11 floating turbines, which supply two nearby oil and gas installations with roughly 35% of their energy needs. Not that Norway can square the circle of its energy portfolio quite so easily. From the continued climate impact of oil and gas to challenges around cost, the country still has plenty to do to consider.

Norse ideas

Perhaps surprisingly for a country regularly battered by chilly North Sea winds, Norway has traditionally remained aloof to the potential of wind energy. In large part, suggests Stuart Leitch, that’s simply down to the range of decent alternatives.

“The largest share of electricity produced in Norway comes from hydropower, with over 90% of the [nation’s] electricity produced by hydropower for the past 20 years,” explains Leitch, the new energies research manager at Westwood Global Energy Group. “With the hydropower infrastructure in place, Norway has been an exporter of its produced oil since 1972, shortly after the first production from the Ekofisk field in June 1971.”

That last point is important. Though Norwegians haven’t needed to power their houses or factories with oil and gas, these planet-harming industries have grown to dominate the country’s economy. “It’s for my pension, I’m told,” jokes Øistein Schmidt Galaaen, the production and sustainability director at Renewable Norway, an Oslo non-profit.

Over recent times, however, Norway’s comfortable energy mix has come in for criticism. In August 2023, after the government approved 19 new oil and gas projects worth $18bn altogether, a representative from Young Friends of the Earth Norway argued the country was “heading in the wrong direction”. From a purely environmental perspective, it’s hard to disagree, especially when you recall that Norwegian politicians of all stripes have awarded 700 oil and gas exploration licences over the past decade.

With that in mind – and, of course, with the rising understanding that drastic carbon emission cuts are urgently needed – it’s no wonder that an increasing number of insiders are considering how the wind sector could help.

“With the increasing demand for decarbonisation of industries across Norway,” explains Westwood’s research director, Yvonne Telford, “supply from the national grid is becoming constrained and therefore the offshore sector has looked to alternative energy sources for provision of power, such as wind.”

If anything, this is apparent from the numbers, with Norwegian wind production hitting 14.8TWh in 2022 – up from just 1GWh at the start of the millennium. That’s echoed by other developments. Especially since reforms to the permitting system that give local municipalities more say about where and how turbines are built, Galaaen notes “there’s a stronger and renewed political wish for more onshore wind”.

That’s clear, at any rate, when it comes to onshore production. In December 2022, to give one example, a trio of companies said they were partnering to build around 50 wind turbines near Høyanger, in the mountains north of Bergen. That’s echoed by offshore production, too.

In 2022, Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre stated that he wanted to allocate 30GW of offshore wind capacity by 2040 – representing more electricity than Norway currently consumes per annum. Like with landlocked developments, moreover, these aspirations dovetail with real-world action. In March 2023, Støre opened its first tenders to build offshore turbines in an area off southern Norway that are enough to power 460,000 houses.

Taking it slow

Though efforts are sure to hearten critics like Friends of the Earth, they still leave Norway’s vast oil and gas reserves untouched. Hywind Tampen, however, could provide a way forward.

Boasting a capacity of 88MW, this is the world’s largest floating offshore wind farm. But unlike other projects, Hywind Tampen isn’t there to power the 5.4 million people who call Norway home. Rather, by powering the nearby Snorre and Gullfaks offshore oil and gas fields, developers Equinor hope to mitigate some of the sector’s worst environmental effects.

In a theoretical sense, this feels sensible. Traditionally, such petroleum installations are powered by gas turbines, even as Galaaen argues “there’s a clear climate benefit to electrifying them with renewables”. But by switching in wind turbines, Leitch explains that a “fully electrified platform has the potential to reduce its offshore emissions by up to 90%”.

So far, so green. But there’s obviously a problem here. For if Hywind Tampen promises to make Norwegian oil and gas more sustainable in the first instance, it does nothing to mitigate its impact downstream.

“While platform electrification can help reduce emissions associated with the extraction process,” Leitch warns, “it is still ultimately a fossil fuel which is being extracted”, adding that 90% of fossil fuel emissions actually come from being used as hydrocarbons in cars and aircraft. Nor do the issues with projects like Hywind Tampen end there.

They may be sustainable in theory, but the wind doesn’t always blow, and oil derricks will therefore always need alternative power sources to carry on functioning. Naturally that increases costs ≠ hardly helped, says Bahzad Ayoub, another Westwood expert, by economies of scale. Because its only function is to fuel the Snorre and Gullfaks fields, Hywind Tampen has a total installed capacity of around 88MW. By way of comparison, Ayoub points out, in January 2022 the average capacity of wind farms awarded leases in the ScotWind leasing round was over 1.7GW.

There are potential workarounds here. One answer, Ayoub suggests, could be to build big immediately and send any excess power that is not needed by oil and gas installations to the onshore electricity grid. But powering towns and cities via offshore turbines is always expensive, particularly when relying on pricey floating platforms.

It’s surely no coincidence that in May this year Equinor indefinitely postponed its Trollvind offshore wind initiative, citing rising costs as one factor. Like Hywind Tampen, Trollvind was supposed to provide clean power to nearby oil and gas installations – and like Hywind, the Trollvind turbines were also meant to float on platforms.

Will oil be back?

Amid all this disorder, one solution could plausibly be to abandon offshore turbines together and instead drastically ramp up onshore wind production. When you consider Norway’s mountainous landscape, as well as the fact that population density is just 15 people per square kilometre – England has 434 – this option seems even more appealing, no doubt reflected by schemes like the one near Hoyanger. Yet here, too, weighing environmentalism with broader societal concerns isn’t straightforward. Though hardly a natural opponent of wind farms, Greta Thunberg has fiercely protested against a pair of wind farms in western Norway, arguing they violated the rights of the native Sami people, in particular harming their reindeer herding culture.

The Supreme Court in Oslo ruled against the turbines in October 2021, making the argument as much legal as societal. Even so, it speaks once more to the immense difficulties this country, alongside many others, faces when balancing the demands of the planet with those of the people who live there.

“It’s fair to say that Norway has had a strong financial interest in keeping the oil and gas activity up and running,” concedes Galaaen – even as he acknowledges that “now we need to speed up the transition” towards renewables. But what that balance is and how exactly Norway reaches it remains decidedly unclear.

This article first appeared in World Wind Technology magazine.

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In the UK, the spike in energy prices that followed the war was a huge blow to the UK economy, forcing the government to provide over £78bn in support to households and businesses while inflation rose to a peak of more than 11%. By September 2023, inflation still held at 6.7%, largely due to the increased cost of fuel. Inevitably, that’s all passed down to the consumer, and the energy price cap is expected to be raised some 5% to roughly £1,930 a year in January 2024. Even before the latest increase, some UK households have seen their standing charges double over the past two years.

It’s clear, then, that the green energy transition not only offers Europe the opportunity to combat climate change and reduce pollution, but also to improve its energy security and ensure price stability within its energy market. Yet, several of Europe’s energy problems still need to be overcome. Offshore wind power boasts great potential for tackling some of them.

Boost energy security

“Offshore wind has a huge potential to contribute to the energy transition,” says Per-Erik Holsten, head of ABB Energy Industries Northern Europe. “From increasing energy security and self-sufficiency for both households and industries to creating jobs, the benefits are clear. Not to mention that offshore wind will also play a key role in addressing the decarbonisation goals set in the global fight against climate change.”

Since the breakout of the war in Ukraine, Europe has been searching for ways to reduce its dependence on Russian oil and gas. In 2021, Russian natural gas accounted for almost 45% of the EU’s gas imports, while oil made up about a third of the EU’s oil imports, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). Of all the different types of green energy, offshore wind power is well posed to help quickly divest Europe from Russian fossil fuels.

“Offshore wind is cost-effective, but pricing is highly dependent on capacity. The more green energy sources that enter production, the greater the local supply, the bigger the impact on energy costs,” says Holsten. “For example, during the summer when we had a lot of wind capacity, we saw energy prices coming down as a result.”

Naturally, improving energy supply within European countries and reducing the need for imports will also boost energy security across the continent. Russia is already feeling the impact on its energy exports, which the IEA predicts will fall by 7% in the coming decades. Indeed, the nation’s revenue from oil and gas was down a whopping 45% year over year in the first quarter of 2023.

Similarly, it’s worth noting that unlike other forms of energy generation, offshore wind doesn’t take up valuable land – something that’s particularly useful for nations like the UK that control vast swathes of ocean. By 2030, the UK intends to increase its offshore wind energy capacity to 50GW, up from the 14GW it’s supplying into the grid in 2023 – an ambitious goal, to say the least, and one that will require a lot of turbines and a lot of workers. If the UK is to hit this target, more than 106,000 people will be employed in the country’s offshore wind industry, according to the Offshore Wind Industry Council, presenting clear economic benefits for the region. And while the UK has a long way to go over the next seven years, we’re already seeing major projects in development, Holsten says. These include the Hornsea Wind Farm, of which the first two subzones are already completed and operational, with Projects 3 and 4 set to be up and running in 2025 and 2027, respectively, with a total capacity of about 6GW.

ABB is heavily involved in the work at Hornsea 3, Holsten notes, and in the upcoming Dogger Bank, which is set to become the world’s largest wind farm upon its completion. The project will be built in three 1.2GW phases – Dogger Bank A, B and C – and will be fully operational by 2026 – a key step in the UK reaching its 2030 targets.

“If the UK reaches its goal of 50GW by 2030, it will jump from 18% offshore wind power being supplied into the UK grid to over 60%,” Holsten notes, “delivering renewable energy to all 30 million UK households with a surplus to still export and power a further 37 million homes in neighbouring countries.”

Permitting and storage challenges

That’s not, of course, to suggest that offshore wind doesn’t come with its own challenges – with issues around permitting posing one of the biggest obstacles at play. “Governments have different speeds of implementing and giving permits to developers,” Holsten explains. Indeed, some 21GW of offshore wind power capacity was stuck in permitting procedures across Europe as of April, according to WindEurope – and some European countries can take up to nine years to hand out a permit for a project.

“In the US, you have the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which actually promotes and speeds up the permitting process – and also to a certain extent provides tax incentives and [other] incentives for developers to move faster,” he notes. “In Europe, we are not that far along with our [IRA-equivalent] policies, yet.”

Indeed, Europe has struggled in its wind energy development over the past few years, installing only 16GW of new wind in 2022 when it needs an average of 31GW per year to meet its 2030 targets. Holsten believes that many European nations can learn from the UK in terms of the goals it has set for itself for offshore wind capacity. However, he notes that the UK also has room for improvement, particularly when it comes to its government and other relevant authorities speeding up the various processes and permitting at play.

Similarly, it’s also worth noting that wind power – whether offshore or onshore – is not a constant source of energy, and fluctuations in generation depending on wind levels are an inherent aspect of this energy source. This can present problems for the grid – not only when wind levels are too low, but also when they’re too high. Between October 2022 and January 2023, for example, the UK was unable to store more than 1.35TWh of wind energy during peak conditions – enough to power some 1.2 million homes – according to Ofgem estimates.

To solve this issue, the UK and Europe more broadly will need to invest in long-term energy storage solutions, which can come in several different forms. “Battery storage and battery technology is developing very quickly as we speak – that’s going to be one part of solving the storage issue,” notes Holsten. “Hydrogen is another.”

As he notes, Europe will have to take significant steps towards developing energy storage in parallel with its offshore wind capacity to meet its energy targets. “We first have to make sure that we have a sufficient amount of energy for our housing and our industries and so on – and at a reasonable cost,” he adds. “But when you start to see excess capacity coming from offshore wind that you can use for other purposes, storage will become a very important problem to solve.”

Revolution or evolution?

While Holsten is swift to note the challenges that households have faced since the start of the war in Ukraine in terms of electricity and heating bills – particularly in the first few weeks of the conflict, which saw energy prices peak as the Russian gas supply was cut off from the rest of Europe – he’s more optimistic about the current state of play.

“I think now we are much closer to being back to normal. We have been able to tackle that problem very quickly, although the prices that households had to pay for electricity and heating bills a year ago no doubt felt like a very heavy burden,” he says. “But I think we’re already starting to see the impact of offshore wind capacity that [have] been installed, and there will be more installed up to 2026.”

Looking at the future impact of offshore wind power, Holsten is particularly struck by what he calls the “new constellations of collaborations between different market players”. Citing the Dogger Bank wind farm as an example, he notes that Equinor, SSE Renewables and Vårgrønn share a partnership on the project at a 40-40-20 respective split.

“We see these constellations coming,” Holsten adds, before noting that the success of such offshore wind partnerships depends on the ability to find investment to develop further projects, either from governments and authorities or from the private sector. To encourage such investment, governments and policymakers could streamline permitting processes and ensure subsidies and loans are more readily available for the sector. “We are in a new industrial revolution, almost, with the energy transition. Or rather, let’s call it an evolution – we must help that evolution develop as quickly as possible.”

Of course, only time will tell how quickly this revolution or evolution will take place. For the foreseeable future, however, offshore wind and other green energy sources will have to complement fossil fuels as we wean ourselves off them. The ongoing energy security problem that Europe has had to address in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine will certainly incentivise greater investment in offshore wind and other green energy sources, but there still remains work to be done.

“I think we’ll see a mix – a hybrid generation,” says Holsten, regarding potential solutions to Europe’s energy security. “But if I look at offshore wind as one of the technologies that we will be using to provide secure and cheap power, that is in my opinion the fastest way to solve the problem. […] From a speed perspective, it’s the best option we have at the moment to help develop green power, improve energy security, provide a cheaper energy cost to our society and also help with the decarbonisation problem.”

This article first appeared in World Wind Technology magazine.

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Environmental benefits

Carbon farming: Mine leases generally lock up vast land areas. This land presents a commercially viable, yet neglected, opportunity for carbon farming. For example, replanting abandoned leases could earn carbon credits under the Australian government’s Carbon Farming Initiative. It can help ‘hard to abate’ industries such as mining move towards net zero emissions. Sustainable and renewable energy: Abandoned mines can also be used to produce and store renewable energy. Examples range from providing sites for solar farms to Green Gravity’s energy storage technology. Green Gravity uses a system of weights in a mine shaft to store energy from renewable sources. This energy is used to raise the weights. The energy can later be released when the weights are lowered under the pull of gravity.

Another example is the former Kidston gold mine’s pumped storage hydro project. This system uses two water reservoirs in former open pits. Renewable energy is used to pump water into the higher reservoir. Releasing this water into the lower reservoir generates hydropower energy as needed. For abandoned deeper mines, tapping into geothermal energy could even make it viable to resume mining.

Water security: Abandoned mines or quarry pits can store large amounts of drinking, harvested and recycled water. This will help increase water security, especially when located near urban areas or industry corridors. Disaster prevention: Another option is re-naturalisation. This depends heavily, though, on location and mine type. For example, Indonesia has plans to restore forest on former mine sites to help reduce floods. These reforested areas will help retain floodwaters. Biodiversity restoration: Nature-based approaches to mine rehabilitation include reforestation and phytoremediation, which uses plants to clean up contaminated environments. These approaches tackle mines’ legacy of pollution and add ecological value.

Restored land allows for native species to be reintroduced. It can also provide bridges between patches of habitat to enhance biodiversity. In Victoria, this has been done with a former quarry at Royal Botanic Gardens Cranbourne.

Social benefits

Improving urban liveability: Re-naturalised mines can be valuable communal and green spaces. Particularly when done in urban areas, it can provide residents with better air quality, microclimates and quality of life as these sites support recreational and cultural activities. All Nations Park is another example of a quarry restoration just seven kilometres from the Melbourne CBD. Education and tourism opportunities: Restored mining land opens up educational, architectural and tourism opportunities. These range from hotels such as the InterContinental Shanghai Wonderland – most of it is underground – to eco-tourism and education centres, such as the Eden Project in the UK.

Economic benefits

Critical minerals: Critical minerals are vital for batteries, electric vehicles and electrification needs. These minerals can be extracted from inactive mines and tailings storages. Mine waste processing could contribute billions of dollars a year to the economy and support regional jobs.

Job creation: Several large regions in Australia, including the Pilbara and Bowen Basins, face similar rehabilitation challenges. But each company is responsible for its own mine closure and rehabilitation. Current mining business models are not well-suited for rehabilitation. However, the scale of the rehabilitation work required in a major mining region would support an entire regional industry. It could provide many local jobs after mines close.

There are synergies between the many uses of restored mine sites. For example, the Royal Botanic Gardens Cranbourne not only restored biodiversity, but has also created an attractive space for people to gather, along with jobs and education opportunities.

So, what are the obstacles?

Rehabilitation costs may total hundreds of millions of dollars. These costs are often greater than what governments hold in rehabilitation bonds, which operators must provide as financial security. Nevertheless, the financial and environmental consequences of inaction dwarf such costs.

Globally, the costs of mine rehabilitation and closure liabilities run into billions of dollars. However, investments in green infrastructure have reached trillions of dollars. Some of these funds could be directed into rehabilitation and clean-up efforts, with the benefits of:

• Providing capital to ‘kick off’ and refine the collaborative work needed to deliver multiple benefits – as well as mining companies, this work involves many other organisations and individuals.
• Creating clear financial accountability for rehabilitation.
• Generating business opportunities and sites for testing new sustainability practices, and developing ‘gold standards’ for restoring and repurposing mine sites.

A cooperative investment approach enables all partners to understand their shared responsibilities before any long-term expenses affect them individually. Strong governance, initial funding and collaborative development are needed to achieve environmental, social and economic outcomes that add value to mine rehabilitation.

This article first appeared in World Mining Frontiers magazine.

The post How reclaiming abandoned mines offers environmental, social, and economic benefits appeared first on NS Energy.

Typically, however, tailings have been stored in anoxic conditions underwater, as exposure to oxygen can result in chemical reactions that generate acid, capable of poisoning the surrounding environment. Even so, over time these pools will become highly acidic, often ranging from 1–3pH. These tailings pools or ponds are based within structures specifically designed to prevent the metals from leaching out into the surrounding environment – referred to as ‘tailings dams’. Tailings dams are one of the greatest risk factors in mining – essentially, they’re large bodies of contaminated water held back by concrete and metal, and any potential breach can cause massive damage.

Historically, some of the worst modern mining disasters have been due to tailings dam failures, most notably in Brumadinho, Brazil, in January 2019, which resulted in the deaths of 270 people and led Vale, the mining operator responsible, to agree to pay out over $7bn in compensation to those affected. Recently, there have been attempts to reduce reliance on water-based tailings storage, as elements of the industry turn to dry-stacking, which can reduce a mine’s water consumption and remove any chance of a catastrophic flood or other long-term storage issues. Yet, up until recently, this method wasn’t seen as cost-effective at scale, as the act of removing water from tailings for storage could be quite expensive.

Even if the industry stops requiring new water-based tailings storage facilities, the legacy tailings already in existence would continue to pose a problem. However, advances in bioleaching technology – where valuable metals are extracted from low-grade ore through the use of microorganisms – offer new ways to treat and remove the harmful material in fresh and legacy tailings, and to aid the reclamation of leftover metals from a mine’s waste products, boosting profitability and efficiency.

Speeding up natural processes

On the ground floor of this burgeoning space in mining is BacTech, an environmental technology company that specialises in bioleaching and remediation solutions. Its focus is on the processing and recovery of valuable metals like gold, silver, cobalt and copper, while transforming harmful contaminants like arsenic into benign products that can then be safely disposed of.

BacTech makes use of naturally occurring bacteria that is harmless to both humans and the environment to neutralise resource-rich mining sites – boosting both the environmental and economic situation through comprehensive metal recovery. These bacteria are typically microbes that are found to thrive naturally in tailings ponds – the resource-rich sites in question – capable of surviving in those hostile environments.

“Our tagline for the company is ‘Our bugs eat rocks’ because that was the easiest way to explain it to people,” notes Ross Orr, president and CEO of BacTech, with a laugh. “At the conferences we go to, that’s all we have on our booth – and sure enough, it does attract people.” To help explain how BacTech’s solutions function, Orr compares the process to a brick wall, where the bacteria target the mortar and separate metals and minerals into their core components.

In the company’s bioleaching process, ore concentrates are continually fed into the process, and, over a period of six days, the concentrate moves through a series of tanks, agitation and fertilisers to ensure that the bacteria function at a very high level. The concentrate is then broken down from what is referred to as an ‘arsenopyrite mineral’, with the iron and arsenic dissolving in the solution while the gold and silver remain as a solid, though are not yet amenable to conventional gold recovery.

“The sulphur would be the mortar I was talking about,” Orr explains, hearkening back to his brick wall comparison. “The acidic environment in the tanks is between 1.5–1.7pH, which ensure that any base metals or other metals that dissolve in acid, like arsenic, do so, and anything that doesn’t, like gold and silver, go in a separate direction at the end of the process.”

The next step is a solid/liquid separation where the gold and silver that have been liberated, go for conventional recovery to create a gold or silver doré bar for sale. The liquid now contains diluted base metals and other elements such as arsenic and iron, and is treated with limestone to raise the pH level. As the pH rises, ferric arsenate is precipitated from the liquid as gypsum – a benign form of arsenic that is dewatered and dry-stacked. “I like to say we’re the only nuts that go looking for arsenic, but it’s a big market,” adds Orr.

In Sudbury, BacTech is involved with a consortium to investigate the reprocessing of up to 100 million tonnes of pyrrhotite tailings that have been deposited in lakes around the area. Pyrrhotite is a sulphide mineral that is made up of iron (60%), nickel, cobalt and elemental sulphur. BacTech aims to sell the elemental sulphur removed from the process to the sulphuric acid industry, just as the iron extracted is sold to the steel industry. Beyond simply reclaiming valuable metals from waste products, however, applying bioleaching processes to pyrrhotite minerals also has the added benefit of destroying harmful sulphides.

“You’re eliminating potential acid mine drainage issues or acid rock issues, because you’re oxidising all of the sulphides,” Orr explains. “That’s why tailings are of interest to us. Because the stuff that was missed in the first go-around, through flotation, is the stuff in tailings that’s causing all the problems – eventually oxidising on their own just through nature and producing acid water [that can then leak] into the rivers.”

While a number of large companies have invested in bioleaching, such as Goldfields and Glencore, Orr has found that the mining industry as a whole has been slow to embrace the technology. “I’m constantly asked, ‘Why isn’t everybody using bioleaching?’” he notes. There are a couple of factors for this, however – the first being that bioleaching is still in its nascency in some ways, and can offer a slightly less effective recovery rate when it comes to gold, say, than traditional methods in roasting and smelting. For operations that might process half a million or so ounces of gold a year, a few percentages less in your gold recovery rate could mean tens of millions of dollars in lost revenue.

“Miners, if nothing else, are very good engineers and very cost-effective,” says Orr. “So, they tend to sort of plug their nose and stick to the conventional.” The advantage of bioleaching compared to traditional methods of recovery, however, is that it has a much lower environmental impact, and as the world continues to drive the importance of environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) forward, the industry is slowly waking up to the solution’s benefits.

That’s not to say that bioleaching is an entirely new process, of course – the first bioleaching plant was built in the mid-1980s. Today, there are over 20 such plants worldwide, three of which were developed by BacTech under licencing deals. Now, however, the company is making moves into owning and operating its own plants, currently in the process of developing a facility in Tenguel – Ponce Enriquez, Ecuador, which is focused on processing high-grade concentrates and eventually tailings. The plant will be small enough to start with – capable of handling 50t per day (tpd), compared with a 2,000tpd operation in Kazakhstan run by Goldfields. The BacTech site will later be expanded to 200tpd in a second phase.

“Ultimately, it’s very simple – we’re using nature’s ability to do what it would normally do, but sped up from around 20 years to six days,” says Orr. “You might have to sacrifice a little profitability to do it cleaner than what you’ve been doing in the past, but that’s the way it is.”

Maximising microbial efficiency

While BacTech’s bioleaching solution makes use of naturally occurring bacteria, other groups, particularly in academia, have begun looking at modifying microbes to improve their bioleaching capabilities. One such group is based out of the University of Toronto, which has been collaborating with a group of mining firms to bioleaching processes for use in recovering nickel. While their focus is on enhancing bacteria through adaption evolution, the team of researchers are also developing similar processes using genetically engineered bacteria.

Led by Radhakrishnan Mahadevan, a professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry at the University of Toronto, this research partnership with the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering includes leading mining companies like Vale, Glencore, Metso-Outotec, MIRARCO, Yakum Consulting and, of course, BacTech.

The research partnership’s work all began with an investigation by Mahadevan and Vladimiros Papangelakis, professor of hydrometallurgy at the University of Toronto, looking into how biology could be applied to the mining industry – with particular focus on retrieving nickel from pyrrhotite tailings, an iron sulphide mineral. Attempting to characterise the microbial population found in pyrrhotite tailings, they went out to a tailings pond and retrieved the bacteria directly. From there, they began to enhance the microbes through adaptive evolution, gradually increasing the percentage of tailings solids present in the environments of samples that continued to grow well. Over time, this created new strains of microbes that were more effective at carrying out key chemical reactions.

“Once we were reasonably happy with the extent of growth, we looked at the microbes that were there present,” Mahadevan notes. “And to our surprise, [while] we were expecting many different kinds of microbes, it turned out that there was one kind of dominant microbe – over 90% of this culture was dominated by that one type of microbe.”

At that point, Mahadevan and his team carried out genome sequencing on that dominant microbe, attempting to identify the key genes at play. They were able to identify a new strain of a microbe known as Acidithiobacillus ferridurans, which they titled Acidithiobacillus ferridurans JAGS upon their publication of its full genome in 2020.

The team also started to look into ways to control the bioleaching process, engineering microbes not only to oxidise ferrous iron to ferric iron, but also to see if they could oxidise sulphides just to the point that elemental sulphur is left over as a by-product – rather than oxidising all the way to produce sulphates. This would help limit the amount of lime – calcium carbonate – required for neutralisation.

“In our initial techno-economic analysis is that with the nickel prices we were having, maybe a year and a half ago, the cost of [the bioleaching] process becomes viable only if you’re minimising the amount of neutralising agents that’s required,” says Mahadevan. “We just wanted to prevent the oxidation of sulphur to sulphate – that way you can control the process, get a valuable by-product, as well as try to see if we can leach the pyrrhotite tailings and then get nickel out.”

As with BacTech, the reasons for doing so are clear. There remains a significant amount of nickel in many tailings sites around the world, so being able to recover these extracts in a cost-effective manner has a clear economic benefit. Likewise, on the environmental side, legacy tailings present potential ramifications should the storage measures in place fail, and freshly generated tailings are still being created and placed in tailings ponds. Mahadevan’s team’s initial goal was to run these fresh tailings, rather than legacy tailings, through bioleaching processes with its microbes to demonstrate that they could isolate the valuable nickel and create an inert stream that doesn’t need to be stored in a tailings pond. As new tailings typically possess less nickel than their older counterparts – about 0.5% compared with approximately 1%, respectively, this was a considerable challenge.

“These inert tailings would be more environmentally friendly,” Mahadevan notes. “If you’re able to prove the concept on freshly generated tailings, then you can go back to these legacy tailings and then, hopefully, have an aspect of environmental clean-up.”

Eventually, if the bioleaching process can be optimised both in terms of cost-effectiveness and sustainability, he adds, not only would it be more appealing in the eyes of the mining industry, but some parts of the sector might start considering whether there are other high-energy consuming processes that could theoretically be replaced with biology.

“At this point, the mining industry hasn’t traditionally used biology in a big way, so maybe this is just the first opportunity,” says Mahadevan. “Eventually, there could be many other avenues where biology will be helpful.” For example, he notes that the current microbes his term are working with also have some potential to capture and store carbon, while improved methods of cleaning up legacy tailings and remediating tailings ponds could offer benefits from a sustainable water angle.

Delve into the DNA

Beyond their work evolving microbes through adaptation, Mahadevan and his team are also pursuing a genetic engineering approach by using the emerging gene editing technique known as CRISPR – an acronym for ‘clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats’.

“These CRISPR-based tools can actually go in and specifically modify certain sections of the microbe’s DNA,” explains Mahadevan. “In a way, it’s basically accelerating the natural evolution.”

With his team’s work on adaptive evolution, they started with solutions containing 1% pyrrhotite solids, which the microbes from the tailings ponds could grow in. If they had been put immediately into a 20% solids solution, they would not survive. Slowly adapting the bacteria to a 5% solution over a six-to-eight-month period, however, was much more achievable, and over this time through evolution the bacteria accrued some sets of genes in larger numbers – the genes that helped them survive in more hostile environments, essentially.

“The question becomes, then, can we accelerate that process by which these things are naturally occurring by spurring them on in a more directed way?” Mahadevan asks. Using CRISPR, the research team intends to see if they can manipulate these genes to increase the ability of these microbes to be more resistant to environments with high percentages of tailings solids or boost their pH tolerance. At the same time, Mahadevan also highlights the potential for targeted modifications on the genes responsible for the oxidation of sulphur to sulphate.

While only having just started that process, the researchers have already released a publication demonstrating that, through modifying certain genes, they’ve been able to decrease the amount of sulphate produced through their bioleaching processes and instead form elemental sulphur.

“It’s not just about CRISPR,” he’s quick to note. “We’re still using the older methods that we’ve done before in the past. We want to do both. And we’ll see which ones lead to more interesting microbes, [which] we might potentially use in the future.”

Regardless of where the bacteria come from or how these microbes are created, they offer a truly fascinating potential to clean up some of the worst after-effects of the mining industry, removing harmful and difficult-to-store waste products and or to boost their safety and sustainability in areas surrounding a mine site. The mining sector might be a conservative one when it comes to embracing new developments, but if bioleaching solutions can boost their cost effectiveness and their efficiency when it comes to reclaiming metals and minerals, then they might well play a crucial role in reducing the industry’s environmental impact in the years ahead.

This article first appeared in World Mining Frontiers magazine.

The post Benefits that bioleaching process can offer to mining industry appeared first on NS Energy.

Of course, Al Jaber would quickly backtrack on his claims, putting the ensuing global outrage down to “misrepresentation and misinterpretation”, but the damage had already been done. In some ways, however, the conversation around Cop28 was energised by the controversy, with global leaders such as UN secretary general António Guterres firmly coming out with calls for a full phase out of fossil fuels, along with a concrete plan for doing so.

And as we phase out fossil fuels, our need for the metals and minerals key to the energy transition will only increase. Current supply gaps for lithium, nickel, graphite, cobalt, neodymium and copper could all imperil the world’s progress to net zero by 2050, according to the Energy Transitions Commission in a July 2023 report. Annual investment in these key metals averaged at just over $45bn a year for the past two decades, compared with the $70bn required annually through to 2030 to expand supply.

Beyond increasing investment, however, it’s clear that the mining industry will also need to step up its game to expand its supply of these metals – for example, it still has to find sufficient deposits of them. The mining industry spends a sizable fortune on exploration – in 2021, Canada alone spent over $800m to hunt down new sources of metals and minerals, while Australia and the US forked out $531.3m and $345.2m, respectively. In 2022, the global total came to $4.055bn. It goes without saying, then, that mineral exploration is big business.

Traditional forms of exploration have largely already discovered any ‘easy’ sources of critical minerals, leaving the vast majority of remaining ore deposits concealed under less-explored terrain. New developments in this area, however, seek to improve and speed up modern mineral exploration by introducing AI to the mix.

Adapt to a new paradigm

It would be far from the first time that AI has been tasked with discovering the solution to a problem. Most notably, AI is already being used in healthcare services across the world to analyse MRI images and read brain scans, capable of reading these images and identifying patterns faster than a human can, supporting clinicians and radiologists in making assessments. This can speed up the time it takes for patients to be diagnosed and treated, allowing healthcare services to screen greater numbers of people more quickly, while providing them with the help they need.

“The benefits of AI are not unique to the challenge of discovering mineral deposits,” says Yair Frastai, co-founder and CEO of VerAI Discoveries, a leading AI-based mineral asset generator based in Boston, US, which has developed AI solutions that aim to improve the probability of discovering economic mineral deposits. “There are several industries that depend on their ability to make accurate, faster and cheaper discoveries – at vast scale. Sectors such as medicine, pharma, insurance, finance and homeland security intelligence that, until recently, have been based only on expert knowledge, which is great when it’s working.” What happens, however, when the discovery challenge becomes significantly harder – whether that’s due to increased scarcity or to time constraints, or the lack of an expert hypothesis to find it?

Here, Frastai uses the Covid-19 pandemic as an example, seeing it as a more tangible metaphor for a general audience. With Covid, the need to discover a cure as quickly as possible was of paramount importance, leading to pharmaceutical companies and scientists embracing new technology and eventually driving the development of revolutionary mRNA vaccines over the finish line. “There is no way that a solution can be found so quickly if you’re not deploying new types of technology that bring a different paradigm to the game,” he adds.

To date, VerAI has focused its operations on countries with well-established and regulated mining operations in North and South America, having successfully used its AI solutions to discover ore deposits containing lithium, nickel, cobalt, copper, gold and silver in Ontario, Arizona, Nevada, Mexico, Chile and Peru. Focusing on these places, however, can present a challenge, as many in the industry believe that all the mining opportunities for sizable new discoveries have already dried up. But this is far from the truth, Frastai claims.

“The only thing that has really been exhausted is the low-hanging fruit – everything that was outcropping has already been well developed,” he notes. However, countries like Australia, or US and Canadian states like Arizona, Nevada and Ontario, possess huge areas covered by a veneer of regolith sediments or younger rock, with any valuable ore buried beneath rather than outcropping at the surface.

Currently, most of the existing mineral resources that have been discovered and extracted have come from outcropping or near outcropping geology, according to Geoscience Australia, the Australian government’s agency for geoscientific research. This kind of geology covers some 20% of Australia’s total land area, with the remaining 80% covered by a few hundred metres of the aforementioned regolith, creating huge opportunity for mineral exploration.

“The traditional industry today is based on prospecting and expertise that goes back centuries,” says Frastai. “But it can no longer find manifestations [of valuable ore] on the surface of the covered areas, so you need a different way to approach the problem.”

This is where AI comes in. Rather than searching on the physical surface, AI instead can help sort through huge swathes of information from the subsurface and identify relevant data within it. VerAI’s solution, says Frastai, is tailored to deal with this exact challenge, setting it apart from how others in the sector approach the problem when approaching massive amounts of data.

“We are highly focused on the geophysical data,” he explains. “And this allows us to eventually see patterns that [traditional exploration] experts cannot detect using simple and limited hypothesis.” This, of course, can pose a challenge when pitching AI to a traditional industry like mining, which can be slow to embrace new technologies and ways of doing things – or, as Frastai puts it, “release itself from hypotheses and practices that belong to the 19th century”.

VerAI’s CEO, however, remains optimistic, seeing both the challenge for mineral discovery and exploration and the opportunity that AI offers as unique. “If you think about medicine and the complexity of the human body, AI is dealing with discovery targets that are changing and evolving all the time,” he says. “In our case, the ore bodies we are going after formed millions of years ago, and it’s not moving, and it’s not changing – at least in our lifetime.”

This perspective is shaped by experience, coming after more than 25 years working in intelligence and homeland security. Over the past 15 years, he witnessed a huge cultural shift as machines and algorithms gradually became more and more integrated throughout intelligence, replacing the expert knowledge in many areas, including decisionmaking. Similarly, he makes comparisons between mining and the fintech sector. “We called it ‘finance’ before it was called ‘fintech’,” he jokes. “There is no reason why mining will not be called ‘minetech’ as well. This is already happening.”

Delve into the data

VerAI has trained its AI systems to search for minerals like lithium, cobalt, nickel, copper, zinc, gold, silver and molybdenum, and Frastai highlights copper to serve as the case in point when describing how these systems function. “Copper is well-known and there are several types of mineral copper out there that people are trying to target,” he says, by way of explanation. “One of the very large mineralisation types that people would very much like to find are called ‘porphyry copper deposits’ (PCDs).”

What VerAI’s systems found notable about PCDs it that examples with the exact same mineralisation type can have very different signatures depending on its geological area. “It’s not because the mineral system is so different, [it’s] that the relationship with the hosting geological setting impacts the pattern that the algorithm is eventually able to find,” Frastai notes.

VerAI is well-versed in how to adapt to these challenges, Frastai stresses, but he brings these issues up to highlight that the solution is not as simple as merely inputting data and receiving the results you’re looking for. Geological knowledge is vital to set the right conditions for a successful search. “You can’t approach this problem without relevant geoscience knowledge that allow you to put things in the right context and to define your discovery problem upfront.” Essentially, VerAI develops models or profiles based on existing economic deposits, and then uses that large and diverse library of profiles to search through datasets to identify locations that have the same pattern that could have been missed by traditional exploration methods. Of course, human expertise is always required to provide oversight for these findings, but this technology provides a great opportunity when conducted properly.

An opportunity to inform and collaborate with communities

While identifying unknown deposits of critical minerals for the energy transition is key to VerAI’s work, it’s also important to the company that as humanity mines more and more of these materials that we bear in mind the cost to the environment and to communities. “The way to do it is to do responsible exploration and responsible mining in our backyard,” Frastai stresses.

Historically, more than 99% of exploration projects fail to become mines, according to KoBold Metals, another leading player in AI mineral exploration. This rate of failing to put the drilling machine on the right spot, from the start, creates a serious environmental impact, as a high-footprint field operation. This is where VerAI’s technology and its approach to exploration has a huge advantage, because it works remotely, searching in the data space where its physical footprint is non-existent. It can conduct its exploration and discovery processes without needing to interfere with the environment and local communities, avoiding any unnecessary tension before the minerals have even been located.

Going even further, it also offers the opportunity for local communities to lead any mineral development projects on their land, by engaging with VerAI. “We can highlight the specific and highpotential locations for different minerals in their land, without creating any damage and allowing them to drive the process instead of being reactive to exploration results conducted by others who not always align with the community’s best interest.”

The communities, Frastai continues, aren’t necessarily opposed to mining operations in their area. “They just want to do it right. And they want to make sure that their culture and cultural assets will remain protected,” he says. “If those communities have the information they need upfront, instead of being constantly alert and the last one informed when something is happening, I think we’ll find that there’s no real conflict here.”

In 2024, he expects VerAI to continue its efforts to engage with those communities that would like to take the lead exploring their own in areas, and he believes this will be key to sustainable exploration. As much as the world needs critical minerals for its net zero future, it doesn’t make much sense if you have to despoil the land and create conflict with its local owners in the process. “People often talk about ESG in the exploration industry, but it’s very hard to transform this into something tangible,” Frastai notes. “But VerAI’s technology and our approach to this, I think, creates great opportunity.”

A fresh set of AIs

It should be said, too, that VerAI are far from newcomers to the market, having been in the mineral exploration business for over ten years. At the same time, this still grants the company a fresh set of eyes – or AIs – according to Frastai. “VerAI’s founders have a very strong background coming from intelligence, the art of discovery […] We are bringing a unique approach and methodology into mineral exploration, but it’s not a walk in the park either – creating a systemic and systematic platform that dramatically improves the probability of discovery is a huge challenge.”

However, in some ways the mining industry is still operating within its comfort zone. There are many demands around the need for critical minerals, but the supply gaps mentioned earlier have only had an impact further down the chain. “You need to ask yourself why Tesla is buying land in Nevada for lithium,” Frastai adds. “Downstream, they are dealing with manufacturing batteries and electric cars, and then they go all the way upstream to buy land? It’s not because they’re great miners or they know exploration – it’s because they are frustrated that they are not able to secure the raw materials they need.”

VerAI doesn’t intend to set itself up as a miner, either, preferring to keep its focus on the problems at hand. “The advantage of our technology is that it tells us where to put the drills, but not how to drill,” summarises Frastai. The company instead intends to stay lean, serving as a project generator that will have a stake in the assets it generates, but it is not a miner, a developer or an explorer in and of itself. “By doing this, it’s allowed us as a business to scale and grow very rapidly, focusing on our competitive advantage of targeting better, faster and cheaper than the traditional industry.”

Mineral exploration was long overdue an attempt at disruption, and while VerAI and many of the other players in the AI exploration space are smaller fry, big fish in the mining industry such as Rio Tinto have also begin investing in this technology. And with the demands for critical minerals only set to grow in the coming years and decades, it’s not hard to see why – if all the easily locatable deposits have already been identified, it’s inevitable that AI and other new technologies will need to be brought in to track down new sources. The human mind, after all, is not well suited for finding a needle in a haystack – AI, however, can pinpoint it just fine.

This article first appeared in World Mining Frontiers magazine.

The post Analysing benefits that AI can provide to discover critical minerals appeared first on NS Energy.

After the event, Rio Tinto was forced to pay an A$80,000 fine, as well as costs of A$7,500, for failing to protect their employee – a situation apparently exacerbated by the fact that Fogarty and his colleagues weren’t aware that they had to complete heat stress assessments before setting out that fateful October day. But what’s really remarkable about Fogarty’s tragedy is how common it is. In 2015, for instance, Adam Perttula, another miner in WA, died during a night shift underground, likely due to heatstroke and exhaustion. Two years later, yet another Australian mine worker suffered a similar fate, succumbing to a cocktail of overheating and diesel fumes. Not that the Land Down Under is unique here. According to work by the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA), 150 US miners suffered from ‘nonfatal heat-related illnesses’ in 2014 alone.

In a grim way, the toll is unsurprising. Both due to the regions where mining often occurs – hot, arid places like Australia and South Africa – and the specific conditions of mining as an industry – underground and physically demanding – ensuring miners stay cool has been an industry focus for decades. How you actually manage it, however, is another challenge entirely. For if technology, in the form of cooling and refrigeration systems, can certainly help keep workers safe underground, it hardly helps people like Fogarty. No wonder, then, that keeping miners genuinely secure means much more than staring at the thermometer, instead requiring careful teamwork, strict work policies – and even an understanding of a person’s specific health vulnerabilities.

Cool it

It’s hard to overstate how hot mines can get. Temperatures of 38°C are not uncommon, even as indicators can sometimes soar to over 50°C. And if Fogarty succumbed largely thanks to an Australian heatwave, dangers also lurk elsewhere. As Kristin Yeoman explains, that’s true even if the conditions “might not be considered excessively hot” – for instance, depending on the wind speed, or the location of the sun, or even if an individual is standing near an active piece of machinery. “Additionally,” continues the medical officer in the Spokane Mining Research Division of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), “the metabolic heat generated by mineworkers conducting work tasks of varying physical intensities, as well as clothing and personal protective equipment, will add to their heat load.”

In theory, sweating is the way the body copes with such strain. But push it too hard and things start to go wrong. In the first place, you’ll start to get dehydrated, even as your heart rate rises and your blood pressure falls. That, in turn, can quickly lead to more serious problems. Fainting and muscle cramps are two of the milder consequences here, the latter perhaps explaining Fogarty’s complaints the day before he died. From there, heat exhaustion and heat stroke can sometimes follow. Neither bodes well. Heat exhaustion brings a range of symptoms, including headaches, nausea and vomiting. Heat stroke is arguably even more worrying, not least given it can lead to confusion and fainting, hardly ideal around heavy mining equipment. At worst, these illnesses can permanently damage the heart and kidneys, and ultimately cause death. Nor are these necessarily remote threats, especially in developing countries.

According to one 2018 study by the Annals of Global Health, for instance, 78.4% of underground workers at one Tanzanian mine suffered from ‘moderate’ heat illness, with nearly 70% of their open-pit colleagues struggling too.

With these statistics in mind, mining operators have obviously felt obliged to act. Click on the BHP website, for instance, and you’ll soon find promises to deploy a range of ‘heat management strategies’ to ensure workers stay safe. In the first instance, that involves machines to physically keep underground tunnels cool. Simple air conditioners are one option here, as are cooling towers that dissipate excess heat via water evaporation. But such solutions come with problems all their own. For one thing, they obviously don’t help people struggling with temperatures out in the open. For another, says Glen Kenny, are the environmental impact of such devices. As the professor of physiology at the University of Ottawa puts it: “From a greenhouse gas emission side of things, it certainly raises a lot of questions about using refrigeration to cool [mines].” Fair enough: air conditioning already accounts for about 20% of the electricity used in buildings today, resulting in 4% of all global emissions.

Buddying up

With these technical limitations in mind, it makes sense for operators to develop robust work policies. Especially with the impact of climate change – experts warn that mine-heavy regions like Northern Australia could have dangerously high temperatures most days by 2100 – that increasingly encompasses a whole list of regulations. At BHP, staff are expected to take regular cool showers, while the MSHA encourages miners to drink a cup of water every 15 minutes. That’s echoed by the need to take strenuous tasks slowly, even as workers should gradually increase their tolerance to extreme temperatures.

All the same, experience shows that mere rules, or even practical experience, are far from sufficient here. When Fogarty collapsed in 2017, after all, Rio Tinto technically had heat policies in place – they just weren’t enforced. More generally, Kenny points out that broad regulations risk clashing with the infinitely subtle circumstances of individual workers. Imagine, he says, two otherwise healthy workers – but one is diagnosed with diabetes. You may not be able to notice at first glance, but once you reach a certain temperature the “person with diabetes may collapse”, Kenny explains. The same goes for if a worker is older, and therefore more naturally susceptible to exhaustion, or if they’re just too young and inexperienced to know better, and instead rush ahead to complete their work quickly, whatever the consequences for their bodies.

With this in mind, it’s no wonder operators are gradually moving away from universal heat stress rules towards a more holistic approach. To an extent, that involves measuring internal and external temperatures – all the better to catch heat stress before it becomes too dangerous. However, if this is increasingly possible using new technology – think sensor-based safety helmets – both Kenny and Yeoman are also enthusiastic advocates of the so-called ‘buddy system’. Pairing two colleagues together, Yeoman explains they can monitor “each other for signs and symptoms of early heat illness”. It goes without saying, moreover, that such close contact makes it far easier to spot diabetes and other hidden ailments before it’s too late.

Feeling the heat

Together with regular training sessions – Yeoman argues both supervisors and workers should be refreshed each year – and it’s easy to be optimistic about the future of mining heat stress. That’s doubly true when you consider recent advances in cooling technologies. Rather than needing to lean on grumbling engines, some insiders are instead making use of the local environment. One option involves borrowing cold water from the bottom of a lake. Another encompasses storing winter snow in a pit, or even mixing water with cold air, using the ice that results to keep mine shafts cool. Nor is this just a theoretical solution. In Ontario, to give one example, miners used this approach at the Frood-Stobie facility, which produced nickel from 1955 until 2017.

Of course, such tricks are harder to pull in the Australian outback – particularly unfortunate when you remember that climate change is only going to get worse through the rest of the century. “The reality,” Kenny says, “will be we are going to see these temperature extremes, we’re going to see rising temperatures – that means the underground is going to get warmer.” Yeoman makes a similar point about what that’ll mean in practice. “Heat stress will likely be a bigger issue over time,” she warns, adding it could “affect mine efficiency because of the inability of humans to tolerate working in very hot areas for prolonged periods.” Ironically, that last point might kindle the sector to hunt for further solutions. For if Rio Tinto’s treatment of Fogarty suggests workers can sometimes be treated as expendable by this industry, profit never is, no matter how hard the sun is shining.

This article first appeared in World Mining Frontiers magazine.

The post Why mining industry has to urgently address issue of heat stress appeared first on NS Energy.