1Minviro Ltd, 25 Lavington Street, SE1 0NZ, London, England, info@minviro.com
To enable the transition to a low-carbon economy, an unprecedented volume of critical metals will need to be extracted. For example, the demand for lithium is expected to increase five-fold in the next decades. This increase in demand drives the need for the development of new resource projects. Financing of these new resource projects will directly be dependent upon the project specific ESG credentials.
Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a tool to quantify the environmental impacts associated with all stages of a product, process or activity. By integrating Life Cycle Assessment early on into the development stages of these new critical resource projects there is the opportunity to supplement the existing techno-economic information generated to enable environmentally informed decision making. This will allow for the project developer to quantify and mitigate environmental impacts before significant capital is dedicated and permits for the communication of quantitative environmental impact metrics or environmental impact targets.
A case study will be presented, where a number of project options are evaluated, both in terms of the process technologies and energy sources evaluated. Additionally the benefits of producing co-products in terms of economics and product specific environmental impacts will be highlighted. Minviro is collaborating with both critical mineral project developers and producers to provide quantitative guidance for the mitigation of environmental impacts to maximize the environmental credentials associated with the ESG scorecard.
Biography
Laurens is sustainability manager at Minviro, where life cycle assessment is used to quantify and mitigate impacts throughout the development stages of projects to enable minimum impact critical metals necessary for the energy transition. Prior to joining Minviro, Laurens quantitatively investigated the recoverability of cobalt and worked as a process engineer in the industrial minerals sector.
