Sustainable Development > Environment > Energy and Greenhouse Gases |
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Our copper mining operations require significant amounts of energy, principally from diesel fuel, purchased electricity, coal and natural gas. Potential regulation of greenhouse gas emissions and associated cost increases for fuel, purchased power and other key inputs can negatively impact our operation cost profile. In 2011, our worldwide total greenhouse gas emissions, measured as carbon dioxide equivalent emissions, were relatively unchanged from 2010 at approximately 10 million metric tons, divided between direct (54 percent) and indirect (46 percent) emissions. The decrease in direct emissions from our coal-fired power facility in Indonesia due to the labor strike in the fourth quarter of 2011 was mostly offset by an increase in diesel consumption primarily at our North American operations.
Most of our direct emissions are from fuel combustion in haul trucks, followed by the combustion of fuels to provide energy for roasting, smelting and other processes. The majority of our mining activity occurs in open pits. As an open pit matures, haul road length increases and haul trucks are required to move ore an additional distance to the processing facility. When market conditions necessitate the mining and processing of lower grade ore, haul trucks must move more material. Our current five-year mine plans show increased fuel consumption caused by longer and steeper haulage. As such, without significant technological changes, our business plans indicate increasing direct emissions (both absolute and intensity-based).
Indirect emissions are generally the emissions of outside providers from whom we purchase electricity for use in our operations. In 2011, approximately 54 percent of our purchased power was from "low carbon" or renewable sources (we generate all of our power at our Indonesia mining operation and are working with the government on a study to develop a major hydropower project in Papua). Purchased power consumption is expected to increase as we construct and operate new water supply and distribution alternatives such as desalination projects. Crushing, milling and solution extraction/electrowinning are the most significant power-consuming processes at our facilities. Under the direction of the Freeport-McMoRan Greenhouse Gas Task Force, we are evaluating the optimization of energy use in these processes. We expect the use of new milling technologies associated with our production expansions to be significantly more energy efficient than equipment being used at most facilities today. For example, in Colorado we operate the Henderson molybdenum mine that has been in operation since 1976 and the Climax mine which commenced operation in first-quarter of 2012. The Climax mine flotation circuit maximizes use of gravity flow and larger modern equipment thereby requiring 30 percent less installed horsepower than Henderson to process similar throughput.
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