'Ignorance' blocking renewables take-up

It won't be a shock for readers to hear miners are sticking with what they know works when building power plants at off-grid mines. But even as the majors spruik clean energy approaches and have managed to significantly cut water usage and power usage, operations still largely use heavy fuel oil, diesel plants, natural gas and coal-fired power stations for power.

Sandfire's A$40m solar project produced 2,108MW/h in December

There are few enough examples of more sustainable and lower-opex renewable installations for them to be news, like the new solar array part-powering IAMGold's Essakane mine in Burkina Faso, the 10 megawatt peak solar and lithium-battery system at Sandfire Resources' DeGrussa mine in Western Australia, or the wind and hydrogen fuel cell storage setup Glencore's at Raglan mine in Quebec.