The topic of greenhouse gas emissions came to the fore recently as world leaders attended a climate summit in April and made new pledges towards reducing greenhouse gas emissions as part of their countries’ Paris Agreement commitments.
In Australia, the electricity sector is the biggest polluter, accounting for 33% of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions.1Any efforts to curb electricity consumption in heavy industries like mining helps the country inch closer to its target of slashing greenhouse gas emissions by 26-28% by 2030 on a 2005 baseline. This is particularly critical considering that the domestic mining sector consumes roughly 500 petajoules per year, which is 10% of the country’s total energy use.2
Michael Greelish, National Accounts Manager – Mining at
CBC says adopting high-efficiency motors, with IE3 ratings and above, is one way by which mines can adhere to their emission reduction goals while also reducing their operating costs considerably.
As a key supplier of electric motors to major mines in Australia, CBC works closely with motor manufacturers, such as
TECO, to work out the cost-benefits of adopting high-efficiency motors in mines, as well as in other industries. In fact, Michael says CBC’s technical teams are often engaged by their industrial customers to conduct audits to estimate a plants’ yearly electricity expenditure and potential savings with high-efficiency motors.
In one such audit recently, Michael says the CBC and TECO technical teams were able to calculate annual savings of $69,000 on electricity charges and CO2 reduction of 485.7 tonnes per year for a gold mine in Queensland simply by switching to high-efficiency TECO motors.
Read More
