ESG targets, Sustainability

Low-hanging carbon fruit

Maban Services is optimising mining accommodation, helping miners slash energy consumption and carbon emissions with a quick and simple change.

As the push for net-zero emissions marches on, decarbonisation is a topic in just about every boardroom across the world. And while the mining industry certainly has a place for significant, process-driven changes, such as supply-chain decarbonisation and transitioning operations to green energy, these transformations are years off.

“With such a complicated shift, it’s going to be 10 years before we see any real outcomes,” Maban Services managing director Kim McLure told Australian Mining.

“In the meantime, the clock is ticking on the 2030 milestone.”

By looking at peripheral parts of their operations, mining companies can do more to facilitate significant short-term decarbonisation, particularly in line with Australia’s goal to slash emissions by 43 per cent by 2030.

Mining dongas may not seem like it, but they represent one such opportunity.

A donga is a type of portable accommodation used to house workers on a mine site. That’s where Maban Services comes in.

Maban is a service provider, and a registered Aboriginal business, focused on the energy reduction and decarbonisation of buildings in the mining and commercial sectors. The company currently has its eye fixed on mining accommodation villages because it sees an opportunity to help the industry achieve quick, visible results when it comes to carbon reduction.

It’s a simple, cost-effective change that stacks up. McLure calls donga optimisation the low-hanging fruit in the fight against climate change.

“Typically, 80 per cent of carbon generated by a donga will come from the electricity required to air-condition it,” McLure said. “Air-conditioning (AC) from a single donga can generate anywhere between 19–56 tonnes of carbon per year.

“My whole argument is that nobody’s looking at the dongas. (They) are absolutely prolific – they’re in the tens of thousands, and they’re all belching out carbon every day.”

Maban’s approach to energy efficiency and lowering carbon emissions is a two-part process.

Firstly, Maban uses Solacoat to paint the walls and roof of a building, which provides moderate insulation and has a high solar reflective surface. This serves to passively reduce heat build-up inside a building.

“Our Solacoat product can reduce the internal temperature by 8–10°C, sometimes more depending on the roof detail,” McLure said.

“For every degree of cooling required, the power consumption of a split system increases by around 10 per cent. 

“By using Solacoat to reduce the internal temperature inside a donga, AC can run for longer periods on fan mode at greatly reduced power consumption.”

Solacoat application.

Maban’s second step is to provide a more efficient means of cooling. The company provides a hybrid solar AC unit that has no need of inverters or batteries, effectively saving thousands of dollars on set-up.

“During the day, the ACs run solely or primarily on free solar power and only use small amounts of power from the utility company as needed in poor weather,” McLure said.

“At night, they will automatically mix power and eventually switch to 240V AC power when needed. They can also be connected to any solar panels.”

The combination of Solacoat and hybrid units effectively reduces the need for AC while also vastly improving efficiency. It’s a simple change with immediate results.

“The products that you need to fix your dongas are all ready, and the fix is instant,” McLure said.

“It takes two days to refurbish your donga, and on the second day you’re already reducing emissions by up to 80 per cent.”

Sounds simple enough, but McLure has devoted thousands of hours to getting it right, studying daylight models and heat mapping for northern Australia every day for the course of a year.

According to the modelling of a typical donga in Karratha in WA, by using Solacoat and replacing the existing AC with hybrid solar units, Maban can immediately reduce clients’ electricity costs by 70-80 per cent, without even considering the cost savings from carbon credits, which will be reduced by the same margin. 

Maban can also tailor these models to clients’ mine sites, providing an estimate of how much each operation stands to gain in terms of energy efficiency and carbon reduction.

But mining operations may not always have the capital on hand to invest in peripheral considerations.

To remedy this situation, Maban, together with Solar ACDC, can offer a rent-to-buy arrangement, allowing the whole cool-roof coating and AC installation initiative to be treated as operational rather than capital expenditure.

“The whole thing is packaged up so that our clients don’t actually have to buy anything; it’s all done in terms of monthly rental payments,” McLure said. “We’ve got a way that they can do it without any up-front capital and where the monthly payments are much less than the cost savings from electricity.”

While reducing operational carbon is Maban’s immediate goal, the company has its sights set on embodied carbon in the near future.

“Embodied carbon is what’s in the donga by the time it arrives on the site and there’s nothing you can do about it,” McLure said. “So in the background, we’re looking at designing low-carbon dongas and whether we can actually make them in northern Australia.

“We’re looking at all sorts of things at the moment, it’s just a matter of viability.”

This feature appeared in the June 2023 issue of Australian Mining.

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