Minerals and Metals

Minerals and Metals

Minerals and Metals

Colorado School of Mines has established the Minerals and Metals hub to provide these tools using a systems approach to leverage Mines’ resources and interdisciplinary expertise. The Minerals and Metals hub has become a center of excellence for mining best practices, with an emphasis on sustainability and social responsibility.

We developed a robust, full life-cycle based techno- and socio-economic resource model that determines mineral requirements and supply chain needs of various future global energy scenarios. The model considers both technical requirements and the social and economic context of these scenarios, including governmental policies and geopolitics.

To qualitatively address the mineral supply chain required to meet future energy demands, the model will include a risk and reliability assessment of the impact of supply chain disruptions.

Model outputs include:

Minerals and Metals develops and test new technologies to increase exploration success and mining and processing efficiency. Current exploration tools are unlikely to find new ore bodies that can meet future needs. Moreover, new ore deposits are likely to be of lower grade, deeper, more remote, and require additional energy and water for their development—increasing costs and environmental impacts. Energy is already a major cost for mining operations, and the industry overall accounts for 11% of global energy use. New technologies that increase energy efficiency can substantially reduce both the cost of extraction and the industry’s carbon footprint.

Minerals and Metals conducts interdisciplinary, applied research to develop new technologies to address these challenges, including:

Minerals and Metals facilitates dialogue across stakeholders and provides high-quality, data-driven, solutions-oriented research needed to inform energy, mineral and environmental policy. As part of Minerals and Metals, we have built a reliable frameworks to help public officials and corporate leaders make decisions that balance market need, economic opportunity, environmental protection, and sustainability.

Combined, these thrusts form the building blocks of a center poised to become the global, trusted source of information for industry, government, and society. Minerals and Metals is providing technical solutions needed to source the minerals essential to the energy future, as well as best practices in social and environmental sustainability to ensure the social license to do so.