One of Australia’s leading decarbonisation and sustainability experts says Western Australian gold miners are not moving fast enough to reduce carbon emissions.
“Some are leading in the carbon space, but most are slow in implementation. It is time to see more action”, said Adam Gangemi, managing director of Super Smart Energy, an environmental services company based in Perth.
Mr. Gangemi says there are cost-effective solutions to reduce emissions on mining sites that will impact the bottom line, but mining organisations aren’t taking advantage of the technology options that are available on their doorstep.
Speaking at a recent webinar, Mr. Gangemi said a West Australian innovation, Minnovare’s un- derground drilling optimisation technology, the Production Optimiser, was increasing drilling efficiency resulting in reduced CO2 emissions, and enabling companies to drill faster, cheaper, and more sustainably.
“Minnovare’s Production Optimiser is one of the better solutions that’s come across my desk,” said Mr. Gangemi.
“Even small projects can get big bang for their buck. This drilling solution is one example where a small investment can deliver a ten-fold return through increased production, and significantly avoid those mine site emissions simultaneously,” said Mr. Gangemi.
“Not having to haul or process waste material is a smart way to do this and it is delivering huge results not only from an emissions perspective (1,000s tCO2 per year) but also increasing pro- duction. If we start to look at opportunities that will both increase production and have the benefit of reducing emissions, this will be a no brainer for underground mining companies,” he said.
Mr. Gangemi compared a range of WA Goldfields producers and found that most could be sav- ing anywhere between 1000 to 8000 tonnes of CO2 emissions each year by using the Minnovare technology.
“By using the Production Optimiser on-site, you drill more accurately and that means more gold on the trucks, less waste and a significant reduction in emissions,” he said.
“If we talk about avoiding even 1,000 tonnes of emissions, a WA gold producer could be taking the equivalent of 300 Hilux utes off the road every year.”
To demonstrate the emissions savings, Minnovare has launched a new Environmental Impact Calculator, allowing mining companies to quickly compute the emissions they could avoid on site by using the technology.
The Minnovare calculator shows how CO2 emissions are reduced through improved drilling ac- curacy and utilises a company’s own data to forecast saving of emissions across an operation.
Mr. Gangemi’s benchmarking of Australian gold miners showed a greenhouse gas emissions in- tensity range between 0.2 to 1.7 tCO2-e/oz.
Mick Beilby, Director and Co-Founder of Minnovare, said “We know the industry wants sustain- able outcomes. Through using our technology, companies will achieve less dilution and devia- tion from an increase in drill quality and this results in less waste.”
Mr. Gangemi describes the calculator as ‘very accurate’ and encourages WA producers to use the calculator to understand the savings they can achieve implementing technology products such as the Production Optimiser.
About Minnovare
Minnovare is an advanced technology company that specialises in improving the accuracy, reliability, and profitability of industrial drilling operations – both in mining and civil engineering, worldwide. Our advanced drill alignment hardware and data-capture software combines to deliver clients’ drill-data faster and more accurately – enabling faster, smarter operational decision making.
Minnovare is a part of Hexagon. Hexagon is a global leader in digital reality solutions, combining sensor, software and autonomous technologies. We are putting data to work to boost efficiency, productivity, quality and safety across industrial, manufacturing, infrastructure, public sector, and mobility applications. Our technologies are shaping production and people related ecosystems to become increasingly connected and autonomous – ensuring a scalable, sustainable future. Hexagon (Nasdaq Stockholm: HEXA B) has approximately 23,000 employees in 50 countries and net sales of approximately 4.6bn USD. Learn more at hexagon.com.
