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There is now a global focus to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases and this has led societies, scientists, industries and governments to consider the specific ways to achieve this transition. A significant portion of this global rethink will be technological, and it will involve engineering, capital and materials. These technology platforms will include processes to reduce the carbon intensity of dominant industries such as cement and steelmaking, carbon capture and sequestration, green hydrogen and electrification. It is probable that all of these technologies, combined with energy conservation, will be part of the vaunted netzero economy.
Each of these nascent technologies will require significant increases in the production of mined metals and materials. For example, a number of credible forecasts suggest that copper demand will increase from about 25 Mt/a (27.5 million stpy) today to 40 Mt/a (44 million stpy) by about 2030. Vale has recently forecast a 44 percent increase in nickel demand over the same period. There will be an even more dramatic increase for strategic minerals, including battery materials such as cobalt, graphite and lithium, and for rare earth metals used in electronics and motors. The availability of these materials are a prerequisite for the green economy, and the gap between demand and current supply cannot be made up by recycling alone while the green economy is in expansion mode.
Many people in the mining world wonder where all of the new mines are going to come from in this future scenario, since these are all mined materials. There has been a steady decline in the head grade of new mines - copper head grades on average...