The Sustainable Minerals Institute (SMI) based at Queensland University is gamely facing down a critical minerals conundrum in its bid to help the transition to a renewable economy.

It goes like this. A 2050 deadline has been put on net zero carbon emissions and the world is looking for energy alternatives to replace fossil fuels. 

Existing alternatives require a far greater commitment to mining critical minerals and these require left-of-field thinking to develop processes that can extract said elements.

This mining and processing will require a lot of energy. 

It adds up to what Associate Professor Steven Micklethwaite says is a ‘wicked problem.’

Associate Professor Micklethwaite is the leader of the SMI’s Resourcing Decarbonisation unit.

His team is tasked to develop new methods of processing more minerals with a lower carbon footprint so the rest of society can contribute the same by consuming zero-emission generated energy.

Related: Australia’s critical minerals list

Associate Professor Micklethwaite also chaired this week’s Queensland Exploration Council Tech Summit in Brisbane with the air of a leader confident of their team’s ability to meet the challenges and create change.

“We want to be able to see the (mining) industry reform its role in society by enabling the building and construction of all the renewable energy we need in order to begin to lower our fossil fuel reliance without damaging the environment and putting off communities” he said.

Related: QEC Tech Summit ‘Sharing for Success’

“And it’s not an easy problem to solve because critical minerals come with their own set of challenges … some of the smaller ones like cobalt, indium and yttrium, and some others are rare earth elements that go in magnets for wind turbines. 

“You don’t build mines for those, they’re co-products or byproducts of other metals you’re mining. Or if we are mining them they’re small volume, high grade resources that are quite distributed. And so how do you get scale of development to make it an economic enterprise? 

“How do we take advantage of those metals as well too in terms of not just producing the concentrate, but actually turning it into products that are useful for the transition?”

Associate Professor Micklethwaite’s work draws on scores of researchers and industry partners addressing the various facets of the transition.

Related: Youth invited to be part of the solution

These issues addressing myriad technical, environmental, water, community and governance risks was backed by an urgency to fill the holes with data, he said.

“We actually need to do some homework and say, what data is there available? And what do we need to collect? What can we proxy? What in order to be able to make those calculations? 

“And then when you have the calculations … then you need to do the homework as to say, well, what does this mean in terms of policy or regulation?”

Video and audio of the QEC Tech Summit is being uploaded. Check the QEC website for availability.

SMI holds free weekly webinars each Friday.