‘What Happens Next?’: Can Australia Become a Green Energy Superpower?

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Susan Park: We can, in fact, transition to renewable energy, and still charge up our phones and our iPads and have that connectivity that we've come to know and expect.

Mohan Yellishetty: So when you're extracting these metals out of that, that means you're making the environment safer and also cleaner, in a sense. At the same time, you're creating value out of waste, or wealth out of waste.

Paris Hadfield: Part of the challenge is that communities' identities are often tied to these jobs, these developments that are in their town.

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Dr Susan Carland: Welcome back to What Happens Next?, the podcast that examines some of the biggest challenges facing our world and asks the experts: What will happen if we don’t change? And what can we do to create a better future?

I’m Dr Susan Carland.

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Dr Susan Carland: Australia’s first mines are tens of thousands of years old, formed by early Indigenous people who used minerals as pigment to create rock art and body paint.

Within 10 years of the First Fleet’s arrival in the 18th century, coal was discovered in New South Wales, providing the colony with fuel for heating and cooking. According to the Australiasian Mining History Association, lead and copper mining soon followed, before the goldrushes of the mid 1800s made Australian’s ore world-famous.

A history that long leaves its mark, literally. There are about 80,000 historical mining sites around the country, and their castoffs – tailings mounds and dams – are still there.

But they’re not waste any longer. As the world transitions to renewable energy, Australia’s mines once could once again be world-famous – this time for the critical minerals and rare earth materials sitting right under our noses in those same tailings.

Today on What Happens Next?, we’ll explore the opportunities afforded to us by these materials, as well as what it will take to pursue them in a socially and environmentally responsible way.

Keep listening to find out what happens next.

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Dr Susan Carland: Mining for mainstream metals in Australia isn’t going anywhere soon, says mining engineer Mohan Yellishetty, an associate professor at Monash University. Emerging technologies will rely heavily on the natural resources we have in abundance.

Mohan Yellishetty: For example, even you talk of copper, now it has become so critical. The demand for copper is forecasted to be very, very high in the next few decades because of electrification and all of these renewable energy technologies, which requires huge amount of copper, and which is critical to many countries. For example, if you look at European Union, a number of those countries require copper.

And even coking coal, which is used in metallurgical operations, many countries require that. For example, a country like India, which is on a growth trajectory, and the GDP is growing massively. So they require huge quantities of metallurgical coal, just to give some examples of how they can be in demand.

And not to mention the other important materials, like rare earth elements, platinum group of minerals, indium, cobalt, lithium. All of them are going to be hugely in demand in the next decades.

Dr Susan Carland: Yeah. Do you think Australia has the potential to become a critical mineral or a green energy supplier, like the leading supplier, the superpower of the world?

Mohan Yellishetty: Absolutely. I think everything is nicely aligning.

I've been working in this area for the past, say, 10 years, or so...

I've been witnessing the growing sense of, what you call, opportunity in the country because we have all these resources and we also have got the highest environmental, social, and governance systems in place compared to many other parts of the world.

Which means, yeah, Australia… the sky is the limit in terms of where we want to position ourselves in critical mineral space, and everyone is looking to have some kind of collaborations with the Australian government and companies.

Dr Susan Carland: Do you think we're seeing the level of federal government support for this kind of thing that we need for this to happen, for Australia to be a superpower in this regard?

Mohan Yellishetty: Yeah, I think, it's yes and no. Although we started a little bit late, yes, I think things are moving quite rapidly.

For example, Geoscience Australia, through Geoscience Australia, the Australian federal government invested some $225 million into a program called Exploring for the Future. What essentially that particular program entails is to go back again, do a bit of scanning of what exists in these discarded tailings.

Dr Susan Carland: Mohan also points to the Australian federal government’s Critical Minerals Strategy, which includes a $2 billion facility established in 2021. The facility is aimed at helping junior and mid-tier companies get critical minerals projects off the ground quickly, as larger companies have been slow to take interest.

This all leaves Australia in a very interesting position. With the potential of becoming a world leader in the shift to renewable energy, we have the chance to ensure that our transition is just – inclusive of our communities, respectful of the land’s Traditional Owners, and as environmentally clean as mining can be.

Paris Hadfield: Hi, I'm Paris Hadfield. I'm a research fellow at Monash Sustainable Development Institute and my research looks at urban climate policy and governance, social innovation, and renewable energy transitions in cities and beyond.

Dr Susan Carland: Paris, welcome to the podcast.

Paris Hadfield: Thank you so much.

Dr Susan Carland: Let's start by talking about what a just transition to decarbonisation looks like. Is it even possible?

Paris Hadfield: Well, I certainly hope it is. I mean, it's really about responding to climate change and other environmental challenges in a way that focuses on improving people's lives, ensuring their wellbeing, listening to their needs and priorities and aspirations, not only in the present, but well into the future.

I guess, in an Australian context, we often talk about or even hear about just transition associated with coal communities. So, how can we ensure that they continue to thrive without jobs and economic benefits of coal mining.

But what we've recently done in our research is to broaden that concept and think about how climate solutions can really address issues around distribution of costs and benefits, thinking about who is involved in decision making, and also recognising existing inequalities.

Dr Susan Carland: So if you were going to plan the ideal just decarbonisation panel, what kind of people would you put on there?

Paris Hadfield: Gosh, I think maximum representation is really important. It's certainly not something that experts in universities, like myself, or in others, and not only politicians as well as decision-makers… these elite groups can't decide what a just transition is going to be for people.

So I think a place-based approach is really useful to think about. “Okay, who is in this community? How can we empower them to be involved?”. That might be local community groups, local council, schools, and certainly things like First Nations groups, Traditional Owners, corporations, things like that, and unions.

So really, it's about bringing everyone together, getting on the same page, transparently deliberating on these difficult questions.

Dr Susan Carland: Okay. Imagine that we are proceeding with a just decarbonisation model. What are some of the details, the finer examples, of how that would actually look for an Australian society?

Paris Hadfield: Sure. I think, at least drawing a bit on my research in renewable energy transitions, it's thinking about things like, “What are the different access issues around, for example, solar?”. We can see that there's a disparity in who has solar on their roofs, for example. There are cost barriers. And so, it's thinking about, how can we uplift the most vulnerable groups in our communities? What would help them also access solar, for example.

And then, thinking about also the regulations, how costs are managed in our energy network. It's a very complex arrangement. I think just directing and prioritising investment to say that, "We're not going to leave people behind," is a key part of that.

Dr Susan Carland: Obviously, the inequalities can come, and do come, from being coal- or mining-focused. The impact on the environment and all that sort of thing. What could be some of the inequalities that could emerge in a decarbonisation process, and could there be different communities or different groups that are affected?

Paris Hadfield: Yeah, sure. That's part of the set of principles around just transition. It needs to recognise spatial difference, so inequalities between places, as well as within a place, and within a group of people.

For example, thinking about large-scale, renewable energy developments where they don't adequately negotiate with Traditional Owners, for example, this can bring up and repeat the problems of the past.

So we can see, for example, ANU researchers have developed best-practice agreement making based on the UN Free, Prior and Informed Consent principles. There's no clear example of something that has worked really well, I don't think, but we can learn from the past.

For example, in that case, Traditional Owners’ corporations need to have the capacity to negotiate on an even playing field, because we're talking about large energy and mining corporations.

But we can see, certainly, the recently established First Nations Clean Energy Network, and they've just in the last week received commitment from federal state and territory energy ministers to develop a First Nations’ Clean Energy Strategy.

That's a really great first step, at least a commitment, to centering the opportunities for First Nations groups to lead the clean energy transition on their lands, and also be part of or… to benefit from it, essentially.

Dr Susan Carland: Is there anywhere around the world that you can point to that has done a really good, equitable job of proceeding on decarbonisation, or is it too difficult or too early?

Paris Hadfield: It's a good question.

I'd like to come back to a local example, actually. It was a council scheme here in Melbourne, and they developed an interest-free financing program for pensioners to get solar on their roofs.

And of course, solar, it's not very exciting anymore. A lot of people have solar.

But that program was really innovative in recognising and working around how to help pensioners who don't have a lot of income, but they would benefit from having renewable energy, cheaper electricity during the day, they can stay warm or cool in their homes.

And that scheme has really expanded, and through local government networks across Victoria, and with state government funding, has really scaled up. That's, I think, a really great success story, and an innovative social program that had climate change as the key driving force.

Dr Susan Carland: So what about the miners themselves? In 2021, Australia’s massive mining sector employed about 270,000 people, approximately 2 per cent of our total labour force. A just transition to a decarbonised future can’t leave them behind either.

Here’s Mohan again.

Let's imagine a future where Australia has moved away from fossil fuels, mining for coal and so on, for example. Coal is a massive employer in Australia, we have a lot of people working in that area. How easy would it be for those people to be retrained and work in mining or working in the critical minerals area? Is it a natural transfer?

Mohan Yellishetty: Yeah, that's a very good question. Coal is a very big industry. But again, within the coal, also what we must understand is, there are two different types of coal. One is thermal coal, which is going to go down over time.

But the other coal, which is metallurgical coal, the demand for that will continue to grow, which is very important when it comes to, for example, steel-making. We still use metallurgical coal.

Although we are talking of green steel and other areas, and hydrogen is another potential energy source, we will continue to use coking coal for some time into the future.

And coming to your second question, whether skills are transferable? I say yes, because the way that you undertake mining is pretty much the same, whether it’s open cut or underground. But the complexity, the nature of mining and the specifics of it would vary from one particular commodity to other.

As a mining academic at the university, we teach our students the basic mining skills. Some of them end up working for coal mining, and some work in the metal mining industry. But I do see that they keep moving from one side to other, so without any hassle. That means the basic skills that you acquired in the mining industry are pretty much transferable.

Dr Susan Carland: Ultimately, all of this effort to find the critical minerals that will enable us to transition to a decarbonised future is to help save the planet. What about the environmental impact of mining itself? Here’s Professor Susan Park, a global governance expert at the University of Sydney.

And are there any environmental concerns with the extraction of these rare earth minerals? Like, in our eagerness to start using these rare earth minerals to get us to a more renewable energy supply, are we causing harm by trying to get these things out of the ground or out of the sea or wherever they are?

Susan Park: Absolutely. So this, again, is an issue of extraction. The issue is that no matter which type of energy we use, we are going to have an impact on the Earth. And that impact can be direct and immediate, in terms of the actual mining site, where we – and by that I mean mining companies on whom we depend for these minerals and metals – might push people off their communal lands. We've seen that with lithium extraction in the lithium iron triangle, in Argentina, Bolivia and Chile.

The extraction process is also quite intensive and can have significant environmental impacts. The lithium extraction process in Latin America is based on a heavy reliance on water to be able to separate the lithium from rock and from the soils, so that water then becomes toxic, that toxic water then goes into the agricultural processes for farmers in the local area, that then enters the human body. There are concerns about the impact on human health, including thyroid and kidneys.

These are just some of the quite significant environmental and health impacts that come from the extraction of these particular minerals. But bearing in mind that extraction always has an impact. So we have to ... and what the engineering field has done is look at what they call the “life cycle analysis”, which is to take into account the impact of extracting these minerals and metals compared to the extraction of fossil fuels. So coal, oil, gas. These are the ones we know, right?

And in actual fact, what they've tried to do is to look at well, if you extract for solar, you're using all these critical minerals, some of the ones that I've just listed. If you're extracting that out, can we compare like for like? And so what they've done is to try and identify how much carbon you are saving in extracting for renewable energy compared to if we just continued on our current path.

And so we can, by far and away, identify that it is much more worthwhile for us to have a habitable planet, to be able to extract these critical minerals for wind and solar and lithium mine batteries, than to keep continuing on the path that we're on.

So that's trying to put in context that there are always impacts. There are some known consequences, there are some unknown consequences, and we do need to be mindful about how we can extract, because some of these issues we know about, right? We know about safe disposal, we know about how we should engage with local communities in terms of free, prior and informed consent. So in terms of extraction, we just need to do it better.

Dr Susan Carland: To Mohan, it’s a matter of turning waste into wealth.

One of the problems with coal, which I wonder if it's also a problem for critical minerals, is we have to dig it out of the ground, and that can cause a lot of environmental damage. Is extracting critical minerals from the ground, similarly, damaging to the environment as it is for coal, or is it actually a much less dramatic process?

Mohan Yellishetty: So as I said, many of these critical minerals that we are talking today, they come as companions to the major metals. So as you undertake mining for majors, so you are not specifically doing any specific minings, for example, to extract these, but rather they come as derivatives of mainstream metals.

Not only that, worldwide, there's a lot of consciousness that has come through, wherein people are now going back and looking at some of the old tailing stamps. Tailings are those discarded products.

Let me give you an example, let's take example of gold. Typically, if you get a tonne of rock out of the ground, maybe you're lucky to get 10 grams of gold. Rest of the ore is going to end up in tailing stamp, which is a very fine, ground, talcum-powder-consistency kind of material which will end up in some of these.

So the way that currently world is looking at critical minerals, "Okay, can we go back and then re-mine the tailings?" So that one, you are making the tailings more environmentally benign because some of these metals, whose impacts are yet to be well-documented, they already are there. They're highly reactive, and they would potentially contaminate groundwaters and surface waters, and then also cause a lot of environmental nuisance in terms of air pollution.

So when you're extracting these metals out of that, that means you're making environment safer and also cleaner in a sense. At the same time you're creating value out of waste, or wealth out of waste. So yeah, it is multitude of benefits, not only in terms of the monetary value, but also employment, and also the environment safeguard.

Dr Susan Carland: Green mining is a dirty business, but ironically, our sustainable future depends on it. The technology of tomorrow that will release us from our reliance on fossil fuels can’t exist without mining. But as we begin to transition to a decarbonised future, we can work to ensure it’s a just one that keeps the planet–and all its people–in mind.

This concludes our series on critical minerals. Thank you for joining us! Thanks also to all our guests on this series: Dr Paris Hadfield, Dr Mohan Yellishetty and Dr Susan Park. For more information about their work, visit our show notes. Our sources for today’s episode are also available there.

If you’re enjoying What Happens Next?, don’t forget to give us a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, and share the show with your friends. Thanks for joining us. See you for part two of this series next week.