RE: Sassou10 Apr 2021 13:53
That's the big ethical/realpolitik debate, isn't it ?
Does your Western mining co stay in country and apply certain standards (more or less) because of accountability to western shareholders/activists/media etc re worker health, environment/transparency/payment of taxes etc.....or leave it to (a) the locals - inefficient, polluting, 'artesanal' mining; or (b) opaque 'other companies or countries', including Chinese ?
GLEN has recently made the point well, here : https://www.iea-coal.org/coal-mine-disposal-exacerbating-carbon-emissions-problem-glencore/
.."The other view, which Glasenberg said was being taken by some coal companies to reduce Scope 3, was to spin off or sell their coal mines to buyers with no restrictions.
“If you look at that, how does that help the world to reach the Paris accord? Those mines are not depleting and running down. Those mines are going into the hands of other players in the industry, who have no intention of reducing Scope 3 emissions and if anything, it gives them a free hand to start producing more coal,” he said.
“So, I don’t see where spinning off or selling coal mines is going to help the world to hit the Paris climate accord. So, we’re rather saying we’ll own them, we’ll run them down and by doing that, we’ve got more chance of reaching the Paris accord than anyone else because of our reduction of Scope 3 emissions.
“Secondly, what we are able to do by running down our coal mines and reducing our Scope 3 emissions is we generate cash during that period and we invest that money in the new generation mines which we have.
“We’re then taking that money and funding, maybe brownfield, as you said you’ve heard my opinion on greenfield, expansion at the mines which are for the new generation commodities, copper, and as you are aware we are a major copper producer in the world, we produce 1.3-million tonnes of copper, and we’ll continue producing that in future. We’re also the largest producer of cobalt, and we all know that that is required in the batteries for the electric vehicles. We produce about 46 000 t of cobalt in an 140 000 t market. We’re a major producer of nickel, which is required in batteries, and look at the demand for that going forward in the battery required in electric vehicles, there’s big demand for that.
“So, we are starting to transverse those funds out of the coal business into these new generation commodities. So, I think we’re in a unique position to be able to do that,” Glasenberg added.
Asked by moderator Hume to comment on Glasenberg’s contention that selling coal assets did not really address the Scope 3 issue because the assets were just being passed on to somebody else, Cutifani said: “I think he’s absolutely right and when we talked about what we were doing in thermal coal, we made the point that a responsible transition meant that we just didn’t sell assets on a whim. We sold our thermal assets to responsible producers. It’s been done in a responsible way
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