BHP chief executive officer Mike Henry has urged the mining industry to take more risks on innovative technology if it wants to feed the energy transition’s appetite.
Henry told a panel at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that miners should be squeezing more out of exisiting operations in addition to boosting new supply.
He also urged the use of data, artificial intelligence (AI) and new technology to get the most out of established mines.
“Over the medium to long term, the mining industry has to get better at innovating and taking a bit more risk in deploying innovative technologies,” Henry said.
“That’s the sort of breakthrough that will allow us to unlock more of the existing resource or footprint more efficiently.”
Henry said business leaders and policymakers understood how important metals and minerals were in making the transition to net-zero; however, they were yet to fully realise that although the world needed more lithium, cobalt and nickel, it was starting on the energy transition already “needing to offset a declining production base”.
“You need to invest capital just to overcome that, let alone increase supply,” he said. “And the supply is going to be coming from mines that are harder to find, oftentimes smaller and lower grade.”
Henry outlined the fact that a key problem from building and operating a greater number of smaller mines is the “unintended negative impacts on water, biodiversity, local communities and so on”.
This would require companies like BHP to operate “with ever higher standards”. They would need to “create greater value for all those around their operations” and “minimise the impact on water, biodiversity, cultural heritage”.
Henry called on governments to “provide policy certainty and to streamline the red tape”.
BHP had been encouraged by its discovery of a significant new deposit within an existing site in South Australia, using new technology and new ways of sifting through data.