Electrified mining: How the energy transition is finally reaching the mining sector

As the first to electrify mining operations, a Shell-led consortium is expected to create opportunities for huge CO2 savings potential, a diverse range of applications and a significant new market, writes Taavi Madiberk, CEO of Skeleton Technologies.

The mining industry emits between 1.9-5.1Gt of CO2 equivalents per year, representing about 7% of global greenhouse gas emissions according to a study by McKinsey. So far, efforts to cut these emissions have been sparse and the industry is increasingly under pressure to make a move.

Diesel-powered mobile equipment comprises up to half of mining’s CO2 emissions. Methane leakages from coal mining are responsible for 3-6%, which must be minimised by phasing out fossil fuels in the long term.

Mining operations alone cause 1%, because of their electricity consumption and inefficient large-scale equipment that uses up to several hundred litres of diesel per hour.

However, there are currently no mature technological solutions to put this sector, which is difficult to decarbonise, on the path to climate neutrality.

How to approach electrified mining

Mining raw materials is a complex undertaking that requires a wide variety of techniques and equipment in all phases of extraction, differing for each material. Making these processes emission-free is the biggest challenge for the mining industry in the coming years.

Right from the start, important questions arise: Which assets are most physically vulnerable to climate change? How might decarbonisation change the demand for key minerals? How can mining companies decarbonise their own operations?

The possibilities to make targeted and efficient progress here are very limited. In the mining industry, currently, trucks and machines are diesel-based. Shifting to battery-powered vehicles turns out to be difficult, as lithium-ion electric vehicles charge very slowly, making them unsuitable for mining schedules.

Complications also arise due to needed high power output. While lithium-ion batteries can store large quantities of energy through chemical reactions, the power output when the energy is released is too low considering the high load work mining vehicles are intended to carry out.

However, with the current state of climate change, all sectors, including the ones that are hard to decarbonise, must urgently shift to electric. What is needed are technically sophisticated applications, better developed infrastructure and more incentives for companies to approach these problems.

Success here is not only measured by changes in the global political framework that force the market to adapt, but also in concrete projects that are implemented to address the technical issues preventing the electrification of mining vehicles.

The German-Estonian company Skeleton Technologies has achieved this type of success for the first time with its ‘SuperBattery’. This graphene-based high-performance battery will be powering 100 dump trucks of the Shell consortium for electrified mining.

The trucks are built to carry up to 100t of mining material in a single trip and are additionally equipped with regenerative braking systems. The heavy weight of the vehicles can convert the vehicle’s momentum during braking back into electrical energy, therefore recharging the battery and sometimes even producing more electricity than needed.

The technology is currently being implemented successfully in numerous applications, including in the transportation sector. It closes the gap between supercapacitors and batteries and offers an ideal combination of energy, performance and safety for applications with a use case of less than 30 minutes.

The mining of the future is electric

The SuperBattery’s unique properties stem from its main component, graphene. Skeleton has developed and patented its own technology called ‘curved graphene’.

Curved graphene differs from regular graphene. Its wafer-thin, honeycomb-like carbon structures with a large surface area allow high conductivity and quick charge and discharge times of electrical currents. Energy can be absorbed and delivered at up to 65Wh/kg, at around 30 seconds. As a result, the dump trucks can be fully charged with 400kW of electricity in 90 seconds.

Curved Graphene material allows for 100x faster charging compared to standard lithium-ion batteries. Used in off-road vehicles, SuperBattery, therefore, requires much less charging time spent per day: less than an hour, whereas 6.5 hours would be needed with a lithium-ion battery.

SuperBattery also has an extended service life, lasting for 50,000 charging cycles. By comparison, the service life of a lithium-ion battery is around 4,000 charging cycles. Also, it is free from cobalt, copper, nickel and graphite, and much safer than a lithium-ion battery, even when crushed, overheated or pierced.

Using decarbonised electricity, electrification offers off-road industries the immediate potential to shift away from a long-standing reliance on diesel. For hard to decarbonise sectors like mining, this is critical. By 2030, it is estimated that an electric haulage truck will lower total cost of ownership, with 20% lower maintenance costs and 40% lower fuel costs than existing diesel trucks.

The combination of lithium-ion batteries and superbatteries presents attractive opportunities for the switch to e-mobility. While the energy transition is already in full swing in other sectors, it is just beginning to emerge in the mining sector. For that reason, new innovations are in demand. The writer has estimated in Handelsblatt that the sales opportunities for the Superbattery amount to €95 billion (US$101 billion).

In addition to saving several gigatons of CO2 emissions per year, the switch to electric drives has other synergistic effects, for example, reducing exhaust, which in turn minimises air purification costs.

According to McKinsey, electric vehicles also have a total cost of ownership up to 20% lower than internal combustion engine vehicles in some cases. Newmont, for example, recently began production at its fully electric Borden mine in Ontario, Canada. Along with electrified propulsion, there are many other applications for the superbattery: pumps, glands, heaters and other machines could use electrified drives to run on clean energy in the future.

In fact, the use of electric off-road vehicles in mining could help the power grid cope with the inherent variability of renewable energy. Fully electrified mining fleets integrated into the power grid during off-hours would free up necessary storage capacity. Coupling these sectors would create an energy system capable of handling the more complex interplay of supply and demand.

For a long time, industrial companies made the mistake of viewing sustainability as a local problem. But global warming, as a global crisis, is becoming more apparent and can no longer wait. From plastic cutlery bans to extended producer responsibility, sustainability and carbon neutrality are issues that are now being addressed in the commercial sector far more than in industry.

Large mining companies, in particular, now have a duty to drive innovations forward in a targeted manner and to find intelligent combinations for them.

Taavi Madiberk is the CEO and co-founder of Skeleton Technologies, a global Cleantech 100 company and leader in energy storage technology for automotive, transportation, grid and industrial applications.