The world needed to act with speed and smarts to meet decarbonisation standards and alleviate the consequences of greenhouse heating.

That came from Australian Chief Scientist Cathy Foley who gave a rollercoaster address as part of the opening of the last day of the World Mining Congress in Brisbane.

Dr Foley presented figures behind the Everest-sized issues and, at the same time, examples of ingenuity being brought into play as solutions.

Emerging technology solutions

She told the audience that there was already technology being developed which would both reduce inefficiencies and find the critical minerals which would be needed at scale before the demand profile dipped as a result of recycling.  

The world needed to act with a degree of urgency said Dr Foley, who noted that Australia was committed to 43 per cent for emissions by 2030 and net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

“It’s not enough to only reduce emissions,” she said. “The energy transition must be environmentally sustainable, ensure equity of opportunity and benefit traditional owners of the land and do this with a circular economy on the horizon. 

“So when we combine these two commitments, this means that Australia is going to have to decarbonise by about 17 million tonnes of CO2 each year, … Well, we could ramp up the whole of Australian fleet of commercial vehicles, all three and a half million of them, and get them all electrified. 

“The reduction in emissions would be about one year, one year’s reduction requirement … So this would be about a 3500 per cent annual increase in our electric fleet.”

On the other hand there was emerging technology that would make an big impact Dr Foley said, addressing in one instance the current five per cent efficiency loss in electricity transmission lines.

“So five percent  may not sound like much, but keep in mind that there are currently more than 3000 large, and it’s over 500 megawatt outputs or more, power plants in the world,” she said.

“Consequently around 150 of those power plants are needed just to compensate for the loss burning millions of dollars each year as we just heat up the planet just a little bit more. So what if we could stop those losses? Can we have better cables?… So the answer is ‘yes’. 

“Well these transmission lines are based on a whole new technology and this is an example of a high temperature superconducting tape … we will need a nickel alloy atrium, barium copper to make up the thin film that is the super conducting layer and then magnesium for the buffer layer and silver.”

Australia had an immense natural endowment of minerals needed for these and other new energy technologies, Dr Foley said.

“So here are some numbers. You can see here that Australia’s No.1 in the production of lithium and rutile, second largest producer of zirconium, in the top five producers for cobalt, manganese, antimony and rare earth minerals.

“Australia also produces high-quality research in critical mineral processing. And yet for the natural wealth and scientific expertise, we are still going to need to step this up if we’re going to meet the needs at hand.

“Remember we are 0.3 percent of world’s population. We do about four and a half per cent of the world’s research. Our critical mineral processing research quality output is remarkably high. So here in Australia there’s significant government support for the sector.”

Dr Foley noted that Australia’s Clean Energy Finance Corporation was the world’s largest government-owned green bank and had mobilised over $11 billion for the clean energy projects with a total value of about $43 billion.