The transition of Anglo American to 100% renewable electricity supply across its South America operations has helped the London- and Johannesburg-listed diversified mining company to reduce its carbon emissions by more than a fifth.

At the end of 2022, Anglo’s Scope 1 and 2 emissions were 21% below the peak levels of 2019 – a significant reduction that the full-on renewables advance at its operations in Chile and Peru secured, Anglo reported late last month at its regular sustainability performance update covered by Engineering News & Mining Weekly.

Next in line to follow South America’s lead in 2025 are Anglo’s operations in Australia.

In Southern Africa, Anglo is working to build a 3 GW to 5 GW renewable energy ecosystem of wind and solar generation capacity through renewables company Envusa Energy, which it owns jointly with EDF Renewables.

Envusa recently lodged an application for a licence to trade electricity in South Africa’s Northern Cape, North West, Eastern Cape and Limpopo provinces over the Eskom network.

The seven offtakers are located in the Northern Cape, the North West and Limpopo and the three generators on the borders of the Northern Cape and Eastern Cape provinces.

Anglo’s integrated approach to sustainability in project development is securing the ability of the company to deliver responsible long-term growth in future-enabling metals and minerals.

“Our unwavering focus is on driving consistent, competitive performance to deliver our next phase of value creation – at the heart of which is our integrated approach to sustainability,” said CE Duncan Wanblad.

“One of our greatest challenges as an industry, though, is to bridge the clear gap between increasing recognition of the need for ever greater volumes of mined materials and society’s acceptance of the activity required to produce them.

“Our learned experience in delivering improved sustainability outcomes from successful projects such as Quellaveco is part of the solution and is integral to how we make our strategic and investment choices – across our current operations and projects in design and development – and to unlocking enduring value for all our stakeholders,” Wanblad added.

“We have long seen a holistic approach to sustainability as a key driver of commercial and stakeholder value. Sustainability is a core competence that we deploy throughout our business, from strategic portfolio choices to project design and delivery to day-to-day operational decisions, always with value creation in mind,” said Anglo strategy and sustainability director Helena Nonka.

“Societal expectations of our industry will continue to increase, as will the need for the essential metals and minerals, and we must build greater trust if we are to provide materials that are required to decarbonise our planet, and that are also the building blocks of modern life – from housing to food – for ever more people,” Nonka added.

For multigenerational assets, such as Woodsmith and Quellaveco before it, it is critical that we embed the latest thinking and technologies into safe and sustainable modern mine designs,” said Anglo Crop Nutrients CEO Tom McCulley.

Building on the blueprint for success established at the Quellaveco copper operation in Peru, the company intends to continue to deploy the integration of technology and sustainability at the Woodsmith crop nutrients project in the UK, which is expected to set a new benchmark for modern mining – “out of sight, safe, reliable, and catering to our customers and society’s needs”.

“Aligning that design at Woodsmith with the highly attractive environmental credentials of our low-carbon, organic-certified and high- efficacy fertiliser product is a further aspect of the value proposition of our product for customers. We’re building the next generation of FutureSmart MiningTM,” McCulley added.

Projects and development director Alison Atkinson expressed the belief that Anglo’s ability to deliver responsible and value-accretive production growth relied on the company embedding the full breadth of sustainability considerations into the design, development and operation of its assets.

“Taking our Quellaveco operation as a prime example – fully digital, automated and with innovative water supply designs factored in from the outset – we are applying that same innovation-led approach to our next phase of projects.

From our Woodsmith fertiliser project under way in the UK, to our potential Sakatti polymetallic project in Finland and other expansion options across our copper portfolio, we’re minimising our physical footprint through technology and designing operations that better meet the expectations of our shareholders, stakeholders and society,” said Atkinson.