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Life Cycle Assessment for the Mining and Metallurgical Industries: Issues and Challenges

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Energy Technology 2024 (TMS 2024)

Part of the book series: The Minerals, Metals & Materials Series ((MMMS))

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Abstract

Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) rating is a key topic of attention by the industries, particularly for the companies trading in the stock exchanges. There is a lack of reliable, robust, and credible ESG rating tools. Mining, mineral processing, and metallurgical technologies are required to be evaluated by consistent and standard methodology to be used by the industries to claim their environmental performances. Life cycle assessment is one such methodology that can be integral to the environmental part of the ESG rating. However, there are several issues that needs attention by the practitioners specific to the mining and metallurgical products and processes. There are several factors such as defining boundary, data inputs, and allocation where multiple metals are produced with significantly different prices, dynamic nature of the changes of the energy sources, particularly, electricity and impact method selection. These make LCA studies challenging which need careful attention by the mining industry experts. Energy, carbon, water, and waste (ECWW) footprint of metals can be a generic simple score card for evaluating the environmental performance of metals, practically in many cases. These indicator results can be fed into the ESG rating tools for company performances in the stock market.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. CSIRO Energy, Private Bag 10, Clayton South, VIC, 3169, Australia

    Nawshad Haque & Nawshad Haque

Authors
  1. Nawshad Haque
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Nawshad Haque .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Argonne National Laboratory, Lamont, IL, USA

    Chukwunwike Iloeje

  2. University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK, Canada

    Shafiq Alam

  3. Idaho National Laboratory, Idaho Falls, ID, USA

    Donna Post Guillen

  4. Metso Outotec Metals Oy, Espoo, Finland

    Fiseha Tesfaye

  5. University of Alaska Fairbanks, Fairbanks, AK, USA

    Lei Zhang

  6. Curtain University, Perth, WA, Australia

    Susanna A. C. Hockaday

  7. IND LLC, South Jordan, UT, USA

    Neale R. Neelameggham

  8. University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, Australia

    Hong Peng

  9. Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), Clayton, VIC, Australia

    Nawshad Haque

  10. Istanbul Technical University, İstanbul, Türkiye

    Onuralp Yücel

  11. University of Ilorin, Ilorin, Nigeria

    Alafara Abdullahi Baba

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© 2024 The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society

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Haque, N. (2024). Life Cycle Assessment for the Mining and Metallurgical Industries: Issues and Challenges. In: Iloeje, C., et al. Energy Technology 2024. TMS 2024. The Minerals, Metals & Materials Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-50244-6_13

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