‘What Happens Next?’: Can Australia Become a Green Energy Superpower?
The Australian gold rushes of the mid-1800s made the country famous for its ore. Now its mines have the potential to become world-famous once again, thanks to the wealth of critical minerals and rare earth elements beneath our feet.
Mining for these materials is a dirty business, but 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 need to put in the work to ensure it's a just one that keeps the planet and all its people in mind.
Monash University’s podcast, What Happens Next?, wraps up its series on critical minerals by considering the impact of extracting these materials on the Earth itself, and on the communities whose connections to Country and the existing mining industry run deep. If we can get the shift from coal mining to critical mineral mining right, Australia is poised to become a green energy powerhouse on the global stage.
Listen: Is Australia Behind in the Critical Minerals Race?
Mining engineer Dr Mohan Yellishetty, an Associate Professor at Monash University, discusses Australia’s potential to turn waste into wealth thanks to the tailings mounds that dot our landscape, the consequence of ores we’ve already mined. He also weighs in on the ability of the existing mining workforce – approximately 2% of Australia’s total labour force – to adapt from mainstream mining to green mining.
Dr Paris Hadfield, a research fellow at the Monash Sustainable Development Institute, tells host Dr Susan Carland about the lessons we can learn from the past to ensure our decarbonisation evolution is considerate of all the affected communities by taking a place-based approach.
Finally, Professor Susan Park, Professor of Global Governance at the University of Sydney, outlines the environmental impact of extraction mining – and weighs up whether or not its effects on the Earth are worth it in the big picture.
“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.”Professor Susan Park
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