Part 2 - The new minerals rush to save the planet from mining’s legacy

Cobalt, copper, lithium, nickel, zinc, platinum group metals (PGMs) — even lowly tin — all of these and many more metals and minerals must be mined at a faster pace to save the planet from the flames of climate change that have been fanned by mining. 

As I noted in part one of this series, mining is the “keystone” industry. Without it, gross domestic product (GDP) collapses, because the vast majority of goods and services that are produced — including much of the stuff that is grown — ultimately springs from an ore body. 

Read more: Part 1 — Keystone Industry: How mining became the planet’s unlikely saviour

This also means that the sector’s carbon footprint extends far beyond the direct and indirect emissions that stem from mining activities. These are estimated to account for about 4% to 7% of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

But that does not capture the whole picture. Coal, for example, is extracted and produced by mining and it accounts for about 40% of all direct emissions from fossil fuel usage. 

Energy is responsible for close to three-quarters of GHG emissions. Electricity and heat generation are the biggest emitters in this regard, followed by transportation and manufacturing. Agriculture is next at about 10%, followed by other broad sectors such as industry and land use and forestry. 

All of these wide sectors owe their existence to mining, and so the GHG emissions unleashed by their activities can ultimately be traced back to mining. 

The Anglo American slogan “If it’s not grown, it’s mined” is used to underline the sector’s critical importance to the global economy and life as we know it. That also means that most GHG emissions bear mining’s fingerprints. 

Beyond coal on the fossil fuel front, oil and gas exploration, extraction and production — and the emissions linked to this industry — are not possible without mining. Oil rigs, pipelines and pump jacks do not grow on trees. 

Indirectly, this even includes the surge in wildfires that account for a growing percentage of GHG emissions. These increasingly intense infernos — giving rise to terrifying new phenomena such as fire tornados — have been fuelled by human-made climate change, which in turn has been sparked by activities enabled by the keystone industry.

And the threat posed by climate change is increasingly grave.

Last year, 2024, was the warmest year across our burning planet since records began, and the first year that saw temperatures flare past the 1.5°C threshold above pre-industrial levels — capping the hottest decade on record. 

Read more: It’s official, 2024 warmest year on record, globally first to exceed 1.5c above pre-industrial level 

Read more: Warmest decade on record leaves trail of misery across Africa 

The fact that this timeline is compared to “pre-industrial” levels is another indicator of mining’s historic role in climate change, because without mining there is no industrialisation. 

Last year also saw carbon dioxide levels rise by a record amount, according to a recent report by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). 

Read more: CO2 emissions at record high raise extreme weather alarm — report 

 Extreme weather events — drought, deluge, increasingly powerful hurricanes and a litany of others — are multiplying at an alarming rate, leaving a trail of misery in their wake. 

The spoor of all this, even on terrain where it is seemingly faint, can be ultimately tracked to mining. The only way to reverse course is via the decarbonisation of the global economy — which is to say the decarbonisation of GDP. 

And the only viable path to reach this goal begins with mining. 

“It’s ironic that the industry has found this role for itself because the industry has not historically been a climate champion. A lot of the companies that are now billing themselves as green energy producers, until recently a lot of them mined coal as well,” Duncan Money, a noted historian of mining, told Daily Maverick. 

“The road to decarbonisation is through mining, and the profile of the industry is going to change,” Money said. “Even if the economic value of the industry increases, the total volume of stuff mined is going to decrease for the first time in recent human history. Perhaps with the collapse of the Roman Empire mining tonnage may have gone down. But, in general, in the course of human history the amount of stuff extracted from the Earth has just gone up, especially in the last 250 years,” Money said. 

An arresting example is Vale’s Serra Norte Mining Complex in Brazil, which Money said in 2024 produced more iron ore than the entire world did a century ago. 

But the overall tonnage extracted needs to decline because we need to mine far less coal which, like iron ore, is measured — and priced — in tonnes.

Among the “green metals” required for decarbonisation, cobalt and lithium are also priced in tonnes. 

According to data compiled by the US Geological Survey, in 2024 global mined cobalt production was estimated at 290,000 tonnes while lithium was 240,000 tonnes. Production of copper — which is pointedly priced in imperial pounds, or less than half a kilogramme — was estimated at 23,000 tonnes. 

Coal production, by contrast, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA) reached a record high of more than 9 billion tonnes in 2024 — a concerning trend we will revisit in part three of this series. 

There is a new “green minerals” or “critical minerals” rush and the clock is ticking. It is a scramble to find and mine the minerals and metals needed for decarbonisation to prevent the climate from reaching dangerous tipping points to save the planet from mining’s legacy and ongoing impact.

Net zero or bust

This scramble is linked to the lofty goal of “net zero emissions” by 2050. 

Let’s take the example of copper. 

When mining giant BHP launched its unsolicited and ultimately failed bid for Anglo American last year, it had one key target in mind: copper. 

And Anglo’s recently announced “merger of equals” with Canada’s Teck Resources — which remains subject to regulatory approval but seems like a done deal — was all about copper. 

The “Copper Age” may have taken off around 3,200 BCE, but the red metal’s versatility has given it a new green sheen because of its efficiency as a conduit. 

“Copper is connecting the world in a very literal sense. It’s the commodity you need to connect places,” said Money. 

Its astonishing range of applications and durability make it critical for the green energy transition. All renewable energy technologies require it — hydro, solar, wind turbines and energy storage — and so does the grid infrastructure to connect it all. 

This correspondent recently visited a new hydro power plant on the Ash River outside of the Free State town of Clarens, and it is loaded with copper — which is why it is surrounded by an imposing fence as theft of the metal is big business in South Africa. 

Read more: Lesotho Highlands water project offers hydropower bonus

The IEA has a “Net Zero Emission by 2050 Scenario”, and it can’t be reached without copper.  To reach that goal, it sees 50% of copper demand being devoted to clean energy technologies by 2040 while overall global demand is projected to grow by at least 50% by 2050.

But the global supply of copper from mining, according to the IEA, is expected to peak later this decade and then decline. And the average grade of copper ore is already in decline, falling 40% since 1991. 

“Despite strong copper demand from electrification, the current mine project pipeline points to a potential 30% supply shortfall by 2035 due to declining ore grades, rising capital costs, limited resource discoveries and long lead times,” warns the IEA.

Exploration expenditure for copper is increasing — an unsurprising response to this state of affairs. 

According to S&P Global, budgets for copper exploration doubled between 2016 and 2024. In 2024 the increase was only 2% to $3.2-billion. That is still a hefty sum being spent on exploration and the returns are diminishing as mother lodes are not being uncovered. 

“Only 14 of the 239 new copper deposits discovered between 1990 and 2023 were discovered in the past 10 years,” said a recent report by the CME Group, a US financial services company. “The situation is further exacerbated by the fact that copper production has a long lead time, taking an average of 17 years from when new deposits are discovered to the production of the metal.” 

Or take the example of PGMs, which also have a wide and growing range of applications that can be plugged into decarbonisation efforts, including for hydrogen fuel cells and hybrid vehicles.

South Africa accounts for about 70% of global PGM supplies, and because of more than a decade of underinvestment in the face of depressed prices, policy uncertainty and — until recent years — waves of often violent labour unrest, production is seen declining.  

According to Northam Platinum’s estimates, the primary supply of mined platinum is forecast to fall to about 3.5 million ounces per year from just north of five million ounces now. Palladium's anticipated decline is not so steep, but it is also seen falling. 

And without lots of platinum, the dreams of a low-carbon hydrogen economy are just that — dreams. As for lithium, the IEA projects shortages in the next decade. The outlook on other critical minerals is brighter.

“For nickel, cobalt, graphite and rare earths, expected supplies are catching up with projected demand growth under today’s policy settings, if planned projects proceed on schedule,” the IEA says. 

But that is a big “if” as the race for copper — and the other metals needed to keep the lights on and improve global living standards — also face numerous headwinds directly linked to both climate change and wider environmental and social concerns. 

Meanwhile, the coal sector is refusing to wither and die. Indeed, it is showing astonishing new signs of life. 

These conundrums will be explored in the third and final part of this series. DM

Read part 3 of this series here: The headwinds that beset mining’s new role as the planet’s unlikely saviour