Will the climate crisis force America to reconsider nuclear power?

THE DIABLO CANYON nuclear power plant lies about 200 miles north of Los Angeles on California’s central coast. Its twin reactors sit between the Pacific Ocean on one side and emerald hills on the other. The Golden State’s only remaining nuclear plant provides nearly 9% of its electricity generation, and accounts for 15% of its clean electricity production. Yet despite California’s aggressive climate goals and a national push to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, Diablo Canyon is set to close down by 2025. A new report from researchers at Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) reveals just how detrimental that would be.

Diablo Canyon came online in 1985 and has operated without incident ever since. But the plant has not been uncontroversial. Diablo sits near several major fault lines, and locals have long feared that an earthquake could trigger a nuclear disaster. America’s Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) ordered utilities to evaluate their nuclear plants for flooding and seismic risk in the wake of the meltdown at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant in Japan in 2011. Diablo Canyon was found to be safe.

Even so, in 2018 the California Energy Commission approved a proposal put forth by Pacific Gas & Electric, the state’s largest utility and the operator of Diablo Canyon, and a consortium of environmental and labour groups to retire the plant. At the time, PG&E argued that there was reduced demand for nuclear power owing to the promise of renewables, such as wind and solar, and the growth of community choice aggregators, which allow local municipalities to decide where they get their power from.

Three things have changed since then. First, months after the proposal was approved, California passed SB100, which mandates that the state achieves 100% clean-power generation by 2045. Second, the south-west is suffering from its second-worst megadrought in 1,200 years. Reservoirs across the region are drying up, badly limiting the supply of hydroelectric power. Just 11% of California’s in-state power generation came from hydro in 2020, a 44% drop from 2019 (see chart). As a result, electricity from clean-energy sources—such as hydro, nuclear and renewables—made up 51% of California’s total power generation last year, down from 57% in 2019.

Third, a heatwave in August of 2020 led to rolling blackouts across the state as demand for electricity (to power air conditioners) outpaced supply. California’s public utilities commission is scrambling to meet increased demand. The regulator recently ordered utility companies to buy up renewable energy and battery storage to try to offset the impending loss of Diablo.

These three trends led researchers to reopen the file on Diablo Canyon, and ask how keeping the plant running might change California’s energy outlook. They found that doing so to 2035, ten years past its current operating licence as issued by the NRC, would cut emissions, bolster the reliability of the grid and save the state $2.6bn. The authors’ analysis shows that Diablo’s continued operation would reduce the carbon emissions from power generation by 11% each year from 2017 levels. And unlike wind and solar power, nuclear energy can provide a stable source of electricity unaffected by changes in weather.

The researchers also suggest that Diablo could potentially help California further green its power sector and deal with water shortages by producing hydrogen or powering a new salt-water desalination plant in addition to generating electricity. “You cannot afford to take technology solutions off the table” when pursuing net-zero goals, says Jacopo Buongiorno, one of the authors of the report and a nuclear scientist at MIT. “All of the above is really the best strategy.”

It is one thing to prove Diablo’s value, and quite another to reverse its retirement. A law aimed at protecting marine ecosystems would force the plant to replace its water-intake system, which cools its reactors, with a new system that reduces the intake flow rate by 93%. It would also require PG&E to reopen its 2018 settlement and relicense the plant, which can be an onerous process, or sell Diablo to another utility.

Fission impossible?
The debate over Diablo Canyon reflects the recent rebranding of nuclear power. Steve Nesbit, the president of the American Nuclear Society, says three things happened in the 2000s to put a damper on nuclear power in America: fracking took off, the financial crisis of 2007-08 lessened demand for electricity and the Fukushima accident in Japan spooked politicians. The plants that were commissioned were delayed and over-budget. Yet evidence shows that when nuclear reactors, such as Indian Point in New York, shut down, polluting fossil fuels made up the difference.

Even while plants are being shuttered, nuclear power is gaining in appeal. Environmental groups have long been sceptical of nuclear power because of the toxic waste it produces, or because they were anti-nuclear weapons. Jessica Lovering, the founder of Good Energy Collective, which aims to build the “progressive case for nuclear energy”, says today’s climate activists are more pragmatic, and focused on nuclear’s lack of carbon emissions. She cites the Sunrise Movement as an example of a group that is not necessarily pro-nuclear, but is against closing down existing plants.

Today, nuclear is responsible for nearly 20% of America’s power generation, and about half of its clean energy. A recent survey from ecoAmerica found that 56% of Democrats supported nuclear power in 2020, up from 37% in 2018 (see chart). “I think young people these days maybe don’t bring with them the baggage of their parents and grandparents, who were raised during the cold war, in their view of nuclear power and nuclear electricity”, says Mr Nesbit.

Policy is slowly catching up to this shift in opinion. Pro-nuclear groups and scientists point to the use of “clean electricity” or “zero-carbon” language in state and federal climate targets as a means of leaving the door open for nuclear, rather than mandating renewables. Jennifer Granholm, President Joe Biden’s energy secretary, told a crowd at COP26, the global climate conference in Glasgow, that nuclear energy is an “essential tool” in decarbonising the grid. Republicans and Democrats alike are excited about the potential for converting retiring coal plants into nuclear power stations. When TerraPower, a company founded by Bill Gates, announced it would build a nuclear reactor at the site of a retiring coal plant in Wyoming, Ms Granholm and the state’s Republican governor and senior senator were in attendance. The federal government is also subsidising the project to the tune of $80m.

But nuclear power still faces several obstacles. Experts say the biggest is the prohibitive cost of building a new plant. New designs, such as TerraPower’s, may help with this. Many states, including California, also have de facto bans on building new reactors until radioactive waste can be permanently disposed of. The federal government tried for decades to build a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain in southern Nevada, but met stiff resistance from local politicians who didn’t want the stuff buried in their backyard.

The first of Diablo Canyon’s reactors will lose its licence in 2024. The report’s authors hope that the Golden State will come to its senses before then. “The circumstances have changed,” says Ejeong Baik of Stanford. “Diablo Canyon presents an opportunity”, she adds. Will California take it?

Source link

   

Study assesses potential value of continued operation for Diablo Canyon

09 November 2021

Delaying the retirement of the Diablo Canyon nuclear power would reduce California's power sector carbon emissions, reduce reliance on gas, save billions in power system costs and bolster system reliability, according to a new report by authors from Stanford University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and LucidCatalyst. The plant could further increase its value to the state by providing multiple services including desalination and hydrogen production.

Diablo Canyon currently provides 8% of California's in-state electricity production and 15% of its carbon-free electricity production, but the state's Public Utilities Commission in January 2018 approved a multiparty settlement to fully and permanently shut the plant down when unit 2's operating licence expires in 2025. In its decision, the commission found that the plant was not cost effective to continue in operation, was not needed for system reliability, and that its value for reducing greenhouse gas emissions was "unclear", according to the authors of An Assessment of the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Plant for Zero-Carbon Electricity, Desalination, and Hydrogen Production.

"But in the intervening three and half years, several new developments have occurred," they note. These include: the signature of state legislation on zero-carbon generation and climate neutrality targets; recent studies highlighting the importance of always-available, non-weather-dependent generation capacity and reliable sources of zero-carbon fuels for hard-to-electrify sectors of the economy; blackouts and brownouts when electrical capacity has fallen below demand; mounting evidence of an increasing danger of severe water shortages; and state commitments to increase the share of land that is set aside for conservation purposes, limiting the amount of land available for energy production and other uses.

These developments led the joint study team of researchers from Stanford University and MIT to re-examine the potential value of Diablo Canyon in addressing these overlapping challenges. The team was assisted on hydrogen and multiple product research by Justin Aborn of energy analysis firm LucidCatalyst.

Delaying the retirement of the plant by ten years, to 2035, would reduce California power sector carbon emissions by more than 10% from 2017 levels and reduce reliance on gas, save USD2.6 billion in power system costs, and bolster system reliability to mitigate brownouts, the researchers found. "Even assuming rapid and unconstrained buildout of renewable energy, the continued operation of Diablo Canyon would significantly reduce California’s use of natural gas for electricity production from 2025 to 2035 by approximately 10.2 TWh per year. In doing so, Diablo Canyon would also reduce California carbon emissions by an average of 7 million tonnes (Mt) CO2 a year from 2025-2035," the report notes.

Operating the plant to 2045 and beyond could save up to USD21 billion in power system costs, potentially avoid the need to use save 90,000 acres of land for the siting of new solar photovoltaic capacity, and save up 50 Mt CO2 in cumulative emissions.

Multiple benefits

Diablo Canyon could be a "powerful driver of desalination to serve urban, industrial, and agricultural users," the study found. A desalination plant situated adjacent to Diablo Canyon would be able to augment fresh water supplies to the state as a whole and to critically under-served or overdrafted regions, at lower costs than existing or proposed desalination plants, while meeting environmental standards protecting marine life.

California "will likely need hundreds of millions of kilograms of hydrogen-based, zero-carbon fuels" annually to achieve a zero-carbon economy, the authors note. "The preliminary analysis here suggests that, with heat-assisted electrolysis, Diablo Canyon could produce 110 million kilograms of hydrogen annually at a cost of $2.01-2.46/kg. This is up to half less than the range of current costs of hydrogen produced from solar or wind power, while utilizing a small fraction of the space required for those other generation sources."

Hydrogen production at the Diablo Canyon site would also likely be cost-competitive with the hydrogen produced from natural gas with carbon capture, which is today's least expensive form of zero-carbon hydrogen production, they add.

The analysis also considered the potential to "repurpose" the nuclear plant to provide grid electricity, desalinated water, and hydrogen at the same time, and concluded that the production of these three products could "substantially increase" the value of Diablo Canyon by an amount equivalent to USD70/MWh, or even higher. "In a polygeneration configuration, the electricity output of Diablo Canyon plant could be directed to provide varying amounts of electricity to the power grid, desalination or hydrogen production, respectively, to maximise revenue, provide grid reliability, or meet other objectives, as needed," the report notes.

Repurposing the plant would not be without "many and considerable" challenges, including at the reinitiating the federal plant relicensing process. Chief among the challenges at the state level would be the need to obtain approval of a newly engineered water intake system as well as other approvals needed for the construction and operation of desalination and hydrogen production facilities, and supporting infrastructure. Stakeholders would need to be re-engaged, and "there will also likely be opposition in principle among some to the use of nuclear energy in any form, for any purpose," they note.

"While these challenges are substantial, so are the potential gains," they say. "This preliminary analysis is intended to allow policymakers and the public to consider weighing the benefits and tradeoffs associated with maintaining or rededicating Diablo Canyon in light of other new and urgent challenges that face California."

They conclude: "This study was not intended to be and should not be considered to be a definitive analysis of those benefits and tradeoffs. That will require further investigation. But the authors submit that the conclusions of this report present sufficient grounds for further study and debate by setting forth a prima facie case for extending the operations of the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant."

Funding for the project came from the MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research, the Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab, the MIT Center for Advanced Nuclear Energy, the Rothrock Family Fund, the Pritzker Innovation Fund, The Rodel Foundation, Ross Koningstein, and Zachary Bogue & Matt Ocko.

Diablo Canyon's two pressurised water reactors are owned and operated by Pacific Gas and Electric Company.

The report can be downloaded here.

Researched and written by World Nuclear News

Stanford/MIT Study: Keeping Diablo Nuclear Plant Open Would Save Billions, Help Meet Emissions Goals

‘Officials so worried about power and emissions, have this gem they don’t really want anymore’

Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant. (Photo: Wikipedia via Flickr)

By Evan Symon, November 9, 2021 11:49 am

A new Stanford University/Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) study released on Monday found that an extending the life of Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant past it’s planned 2025 closure date would help the state greatly reduce carbon emissions and meet state climate goals.

For decades, nuclear power plants have been slowly been taken offline in California. Ever since the closure of the San Onofre nuclear plant in 2013, Diablo Canyon, located in San Luis Obispo County, has been the sole remaining power plant in the state.

Following the Fukashima Daiichi disaster in Japan in 2011, pressure from environmental and local public groups fought against keeping the plant open. Concerns over earthquakes, nuclear waste pollution, and other factors convinced the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) to close the plant by 2025.

While legislators have been scrambling to keep it open, largely due to California being behind on green power generation and the plant accounting for 8% of all power generated in the state, it is still on track to close by mid-decade.

The Stanford/MIT Study released Monday bucked the recent trend of moving away from nuclear power, finding that keeping Diablo Canyon open until 2045 would not only help power and environmental concerns, but could also significantly help California battle drought in the future.

According to the report, extending the life of the plant would save $21 billion in power systems costs, would give more time for California to build up green energy plants, would help California meet the growing demand of power provided to electric vehicles, reduce power sector carbon emissions by 10%, and largely prevent brownouts in the future.

“Delaying the retirement of Diablo Canyon to 2035 would reduce California power sector carbon emissions by more than 10% from 2017 levels and reduce reliance on gas, save $2.6 Billion in power system costs, and bolster system reliability to mitigate brownouts,” noted the study. “If operated to 2045 and beyond, Diablo Canyon could save up to $21 Billion in power system costs and spare 90,000 acres of land from use for energy production, while meeting coastal protection requirements.”

The additional, unplanned energy, if linked to a new desalination and/or hydrogen plant, would also provide more fresh water being brought back into reservoirs than any current state plan and would drastically reduce green energy costs while working on far less needed land for future green energy production.
Positives, negatives of keeping Diablo Canyon open until 2045

The report also hinted at a possible return of more nuclear plants allowing for more of an ease into California’s 2045 carbon emission-free power goal.

“In order to combat climate change in the best possible way, I think nuclear power is something that we should really consider and ask PG&E to reconsider,” said former Secretary of Energy and current Stanford Professor Steven Chu. “When Japan and Germany shut nuclear power plants in recent years it led to a rise in carbon emissions from fossil fuels.”

Other experts agree that keeping Diablo Canyon open would bring vastly more positives than negatives.

“Our nuclear energy technology has greatly reduced the chances of a meltdown or a similar disaster from occurring,” said Sal Braith, a nuclear engineer who worked at several nuclear plants in the Northeast, in a Globe interview on Tuesday. “All the big incidents people think of, like Three Mile Island, or Chernobyl, or Fukashima, they were all in plants with older technology. Upgrading Diablo Canyon, which still has a sound design that still holds up today, would do wonders for California. They’re so worried about power and emissions in the future, well, they have this gem they don’t really want anymore. The solution to their problems is literally right there.”

“And everything the report brings up, like lowering emissions and connecting to other environmentally friendly things, we’ve been screaming that for years for states to pick up on that. California has an easier time for emissions goals to be met, it staves off power concerns for awhile, the water crisis is largely alleviated, and a lot of jobs are created. And if more are built, it only increases those by many-fold.”

However, environmental opponents stressed that even with the report showing many positives, the negatives are still too much for any kind of reconsideration.

“It is enticing, I have to admit that,” said Melissa Key, an environmental lawyer who has represented environmental groups against energy companies with nuclear power plants in the past, to the Globe on Tuesday. “But every year of operation means the greater chance of something going wrong. And I don’t think that I even need to tell you the dangers of what a major nuclear accident, especially one so close to fault lines, can do.”

“This is the last one in the state, and for the good of California, it needs to stop. Solar, wind, and other energies will be able to pick up the slack by 2025.”

As of Tuesday, the Stanford/MIT has yet to illicit a response from California energy officials.

Keeping California’s Last Nuclear Plant Can Save Money, Climate: MIT-Stanford Study

PG&E’s Diablo Canyon nuclear plant scheduled to close in 2025

Researchers say keeping it open could cut emissions and costs

By David R Baker 
November 8, 2021

The PG&E Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant in Avila Beach, California in 2012. 

Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg

California’s last nuclear power plant, scheduled to close in 2025, could aid the fight against climate change, cut energy costs and provide water to the parched state if allowed to stay open, according to a new study.

The findings won the support of former U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu, who in a web presentation said countries prematurely shutting down nuclear plants ended up using more fossil fuels instead.

“We are not in a position in the near-term future to go to 100% renewable energy,” said Chu, who was not one of the report’s authors. “We will need some power that we can turn on and dispatch at will, and that leaves two choices: fossil fuel or nuclear.”

PG&E Corp. reached an agreement with environmental groups in 2016 to shutter the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant when its operating licenses expire, saying the plant’s energy would no longer be needed as cheap renewable power flooded onto the state’s grid. Since then, however, California’s energy supply has grown strained, with the state veering close to blackouts during heat waves.

Researchers from Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said in the study released Monday that keeping Diablo Canyon open through 2035 would cut greenhouse-gas emissions from California’s power sector 10% each year, by reducing the amount of electricity needed from natural-gas plants. It would also save $2.6 billion for utility ratepayers. Keep Diablo Canyon open until 2045, and the savings would grow to $21 billion, they said. The report’s authors also examined using the coastal power plant’s electricity to produce hydrogen or desalinate sea water.

Read more: California Taps Green Power to Replace Nuclear, Gas Plants

Keeping Diablo open would require a license extension from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission as well as the approval of California regulators -- not to mention a change of heart from PG&E. A company representative noted the plan to close the plant had already been approved by California officials.

“The state has made clear its position on nuclear energy,” PG&E spokeswoman Suzanne Hosn said in an email. “Our focus therefore remains on safely and reliably operating the plant until the end of its NRC licenses.”

Chu called PG&E’s decision to close the plant “distressing.” The plant, which is nearly surrounded by fault lines discovered after construction began, faced decades of opposition, which swelled again after the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan. But Diablo Canyon also won the support of some environmentalists convinced it was needed to fight global warming.

“Nuclear power is something we should reconsider, and we should ask PG&E to reconsider,” Chu said.

MINING IS NOT SUSTAINABLE

Sask. company at forefront of sustainable lithium mining with new tech

Saskatoon / 650 CKOM

Lisa Schick

Nov 9, 2021 

Zach Maurer, the president and CEO of Prairie Lithium, holds a small jar of lithium and other jars of the chemicals used in the process of extracting lithium from oil well brine on Nov. 9, 2021. (Lisa Schick/980 CJME)

The demand for lithium has jumped substantially in the last few years and is poised to keep doing so as electric vehicles continue storming the vehicle market.

The hitch is that mining the lithium itself isn’t very green, but a Saskatchewan company believes it has figured out a solution.

Prairie Lithium’s pilot processing facility is in a small, unassuming building in Emerald Park 10 minutes east of Regina — but if its work pans out, it could have large potential for Saskatchewan.

“If the goal is to de-carbonize transport through electrification, everybody has to be very cognizant of the materials going into those vehicles and how those materials were mined in the world,” said Zach Maurer, president and CEO of Prairie Lithium.

Maurer explained that sustainability is what the company had in mind when developing the new process to extract lithium from subsurface brine water in the oilfields.

Other ways of lithium mining and in other parts of the world are criticized for using a lot of land and huge amounts of water, and have been linked to contamination and animal deaths.

However, in creating its process, Maurer said Prairie Lithium really focused on reducing land use, and the volume of freshwater used, waste generated and CO2 produced.

“In terms of sustainability, it’s obviously at the forefront of the transition to electric vehicles,” said Maurer.

In simplified terms, to get the lithium, the company drills into the brine underground and gets the fluid to the surface using brackish water that has been converted to reverse osmosis water. The company uses an ion exchange material to get the lithium out and then put the brine back underground.

Maurer said the company started work on the technology in test tubes and beakers in January 2020.

“From there we really focused on scaling up the chemistry and the process for total proof of concept,” explained Maurer.

This fall, the company finished drilling its first dedicated lithium brine well in the southeast part of the province, which was also a first for Saskatchewan. The company’s processing facility has managed to extract 99.7 per cent of lithium from brine “in a matter of minutes,” according to a news release.

“Now we’re actively working to interpret that data, quantify the resource and then put the best resource development plan in place so that when we do expand, it’s methodical and ready to go,” said Maurer.

It could take between two and four years to scale all the way up, according to Maurer.

The company used the Saskatchewan Advantage Innovation Fund and Saskatchewan Petroleum Innovation Incentive to help fund the work — help Maurer said was incredibly important.

“We didn’t have a lot of cash flowing into the business, if any. So to receive those grants in 2020 when COVID hit really, ultimately put the project onto the trajectory it is. It allowed us to work through what happened with the global pandemic so that we can continue to build this project here in the province,” said Maurer.

The well drilled this fall created more than 100 temporary jobs, but Maurer couldn’t say how many jobs — permanent or temporary — could be created once the company is scaled up.

Maurer said the company is still in the process of figuring out how big its operations could scale to, so he wasn’t willing to say how much lithium could be produced, but did say the potential is large for Saskatchewan.

Global demand for lithium is expected to increase five times its current rate by 2030, and a recent price for lithium hydroxide hit $29,000 USD per ton, according to Maurer.

Energy and Natural Resources Minister Bronwyn Eyre agreed there is potential in lithium.

“There’s enormous potential in terms of signals that we’re getting from the sector around subsurface disposition interest (and) exploration,” said Eyre.

She said the innovations in lithium mining are building on strengths the province already has.

“We have an opportunity to put ourselves in the forefront here in that global conversation … If we can position Saskatchewan for the future and for growing demand in these growing areas, of course, we’re all in,” said Eyre.

According to the provincial government, so far this year sub-surface mineral public offerings — which target minerals including but not limited to lithium — have raised more than $4.2 million in revenue for the province

About 26,000 tonnes of plastic Covid waste pollutes world’s oceans – study

Increased demand for PPE has put pressure on an already out-of-control global problem, report finds

Increased use of personal protective equipment including gloves and masks during the pandemic has added to an existing problem of mismanaged plastic waste, the report found.

 Photograph: Seaphotoart/Alamy

Sandra Laville

Mon 8 Nov 2021

Plastic waste from the Covid-19 pandemic weighing 25,900 tonnes, equivalent to more than 2,000 double decker buses, has leaked into the ocean, research has revealed.

The mismanaged plastic waste, consisting of personal protective equipment such as masks and gloves, vastly exceeded the capability of countries to process it properly, researchers said.

Covid has made us use even more plastic – but we can reset

Christian Dunn

Since the beginning of the pandemic, an estimated 8.4m tonnes of plastic waste has been generated from 193 countries, according to the report, published on Monday.

“The Covid-19 pandemic has led to an increased demand for single-use plastics that intensifies pressure on an already out-of-control global plastic waste problem,” said Yiming Peng and Peipei Wu from Nanjing University, the authors of Magnitude and impact of pandemic-associated plastic waste published in the online journal PNAS.

“The released plastics can be transported over long distances in the ocean, encounter marine wildlife, and potentially lead to injury or even death,” they added.

A study in March presented the first case of a fish entrapped in a medical glove, encountered during a canal cleanup in Leiden, the Netherlands. In Brazil a PFF-2 protective mask was found in the stomach of a dead Magellanic penguin.

The scientists predicted that by the end of the century almost all pandemic-associated plastics will end up on either the seabed or on beaches.

The Chinese study found that 46% of the mismanaged plastic waste came from Asia, due to the high level of mask-wearing by individuals there, followed by Europe, 24%, and North and South America, 22%.

Peng and Wu said their research suggested 87.4% of the excess waste was from hospitals, rather than from individual use. PPE usage by individuals contributed only 7.6% of the total, while packaging and test kits accounted for 4.7% and 0.3% respectively.

“Most of the plastic is from medical waste generated by hospitals that dwarfs the contribution from personal protection equipment and online-shopping package material,” they wrote.

“This poses a long-lasting problem for the ocean environment and is mainly accumulated on beaches and coastal sediments.”

The thousands of tonnes of masks, gloves, testing kits and face visors which leached into the oceans from the start of the pandemic up to August this year, were transported in 369 major rivers.

Chief among these were Shatt al-Arab in south-eastern Iraq, which carried 5,200 tonnes of PPE waste to the ocean; the Indus river, which arises in western Tibet, carried 4,000 tonnes and the Yangtze river in China 3,700 tonnes. In Europe, the Danube carried the most plastic pandemic waste into the ocean: 1,700 tonnes.

The top 10 rivers accounted for 79% of pandemic plastic discharge, the top 20 for 91%, and the top 100 for 99%. About 73% of the discharge was from Asian rivers followed by European watercourses (11%), with minor contributions from other continents, the report said.

“These findings highlight the hotspot rivers and watersheds that require special attention in plastic waste management,” the authors said.

“We find a long-lasting impact of the pandemic-associated waste release in the global ocean. At the end of this century, the model suggests that almost all the pandemic-associated plastics end up in either the seabed (28.8%) or beaches (70.5%).”

The authors saidthe findings showed better medical waste management was needed in pandemic epicenters, especially in developing countries.

Plastic waste release caused by COVID-19 and its fate in the global ocean

Yiming Peng, Peipei Wu, Amina T. Schartup, and View ORCID Profile

Yanxu Zhang

See all authors and affiliations
PNAS November 23, 2021 118 (47) e2111530118; https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2111530118


Edited by B. L. Turner, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, and approved October 6, 2021 (received for review June 22, 2021)


Article
Figures & SI
Info & Metrics
PDF


Significance

Plastic waste causes harm to marine life and has become a major global environmental concern. The recent COVID-19 pandemic has led to an increased demand for single-use plastic, intensifying pressure on this already out-of-control problem. This work shows that more than eight million tons of pandemic-associated plastic waste have been generated globally, with more than 25,000 tons entering the global ocean. Most of the plastic is from medical waste generated by hospitals that dwarfs the contribution from personal protection equipment and online-shopping package material. This poses a long-lasting problem for the ocean environment and is mainly accumulated on beaches and coastal sediments. We call for better medical waste management in pandemic epicenters, especially in developing countries.

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to an increased demand for single-use plastics that intensifies pressure on an already out-of-control global plastic waste problem. While it is suspected to be large, the magnitude and fate of this pandemic-associated mismanaged plastic waste are unknown. Here, we use our MITgcm ocean plastic model to quantify the impact of the pandemic on plastic discharge. We show that 8.4 ± 1.4 million tons of pandemic-associated plastic waste have been generated from 193 countries as of August 23, 2021, with 25.9 ± 3.8 thousand tons released into the global ocean representing 1.5 ± 0.2% of the global total riverine plastic discharge. The model projects that the spatial distribution of the discharge changes rapidly in the global ocean within 3 y, with a significant portion of plastic debris landing on the beach and seabed later and a circumpolar plastic accumulation zone will be formed in the Arctic. We find hospital waste represents the bulk of the global discharge (73%), and most of the global discharge is from Asia (72%), which calls for better management of medical waste in developing countries.
plastic
ocean
MITgcm
COVID-19

Plastics have an excellent strength to weight ratio, and they are durable and inexpensive, making them the material of choice for most disposable medical tools, equipment, and packaging (1, 2). The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated the indispensable role of plastic in the healthcare sector and public health safety (2). As of August 23, 2021, about 212 million people worldwide have been infected with the COVID-19 virus with the most confirmed cases in the Americas (47.6%) and Asia (31.22%) followed by Europe (17.26%) (3). The surging number of inpatients and virus testing substantially increase the amount of plastic medical waste (4). To sustain the enormous demand for personal protective equipment (PPE, including face masks, gloves, and face shields), many single-use plastic (SUP) legislations have been withdrawn or postponed (2). In addition, lockdowns, social distancing, and restrictions on public gathering increase the dependency on online shopping at an unprecedented speed, the packaging material of which often contains plastics (5, 6).

Unfortunately, the treatment of plastic waste is not keeping up with the increased demand for plastic products. Pandemic epicenters in particular struggle to process the waste (7), and not all the used PPEs and packaging materials are handled or recycled (8, 9). This mismanaged plastic waste (MMPW) is then discharged into the environment, and a portion reaches the ocean (10). The released plastics can be transported over long distances in the ocean, encounter marine wildlife, and potentially lead to injury or even death (11⇓⇓–14). For example, a recent report estimated that 1.56 million face masks entered the oceans in 2020 (15). Earlier studies have also raised the potential problem of COVID-19 plastic pollution and its impact on marine life (16⇓–18). Some cases of entanglement, entrapment, and ingestion of COVID-19 waste by marine organisms, even leading to death, have been reported (19, 20). The plastic debris could also facilitate species invasion and transport of contaminants including the COVID-19 virus (21⇓–23). Despite the potential impacts, the total amount of pandemic-associated plastic waste and its environmental and health impacts are largely unknown. Here, we estimate the amount of excess plastic released during the pandemic that enters the global ocean and its long-term fate and potential ecological risk.

Results
MMPW Generation.

As of August 23, 2021, the total excess MMPW generated during the pandemic is calculated as 4.4 to 15.1 million tons (Fig. 1). We use the average of scenarios with different assumptions as our best estimate (Methods), which is about 8.4 ± 1.4 million tons. A dominant fraction (87.4%) of this excess waste is from hospitals, which is estimated based on the number of COVID-19 inpatients (24) and per-patient medical waste generation for each country (25). PPE usage by individuals contributes only 7.6% of the total excess wastes. Interestingly, we find that the surge in online shopping results in an increased demand for packaging material. However, we find that packaging and test kits are minor sources of plastic waste and only account for 4.7% and 0.3%, respectively.

Download figure
Open in new tab
Download powerpoint
Fig. 1.

Global generation of mismanaged plastics from different sources (hospital medical waste, test kits, PPE, and online packaging) attributable to the COVID-19 pandemic. High- and low-yield scenarios are considered for each source (Methods).


Table 1 shows the distribution of COVID-19 cases across different continents (Asia, Europe, North America, South America, Oceania, and Africa). About 70% of COVID-19 cases are found in North and South America and Asia (Table 1). We find that MMPW generation does not follow the case distribution, as most MMPW is produced in Asia (46%), followed by Europe (24%), and finally in North and South America (22%) (Table 1 and Fig. 2E). This reflects the lower treatment level of medical waste in many developing countries such as India, Brazil, and China (range between 11.5 and 76% as the low- and high-end estimates) compared with developed countries with large numbers of cases in North America and Europe (e.g., the United States and Spain) (0 to 5%) (Fig. 2A). The MMPW generated from individual PPE is even more skewed toward Asia (Fig. 2C and SI Appendix, Table S1) because of the large mask-wearing population (26). Similarly, the MMPW generated from online-shopping packaging is the highest in Asia (Fig. 2D). For instance, the top three countries in the express-delivery industry of global share are China (58%), United States (14.9%), and Japan (10.3%) followed by the United Kingdom (4%) and Germany (4%) (27).

VIEW INLINE
VIEW POPUP
Table 1.

Percentage of the confirmed COVID-19 cases (as of August 23, 2021), the generated mass of pandemic-associated MMPW ending up in the environment, and the pandemic-associated MMPW that is transported to river mouths for different continents


Download figure
Open in new tab
Download powerpoint
Fig. 2.

Accumulated riverine discharge of pandemic-associated mismanaged plastics to the global ocean. Panels are for the discharges caused by (A) hospital medical waste, (B) COVID-19 virus test kits, (C) PPE, (D) online-shopping packaging material, and (E) the total of them. The background color represents the generated MMPW in each watershed, while the sizes of the blue circles are for the discharges at river mouths.

Riverine Discharge of MMPW.

Based on the MMPW production from each country and a hydrological model (28), we calculate a total discharge of 25.9 ± 3.8 (12.3 as microplastics [< 5 mm] and 13.6 as macroplastics [> 5 mm]) thousand tons of pandemic-associated plastics to the global ocean from 369 major rivers and their watersheds (Fig. 2E). We believe that the 369 rivers (account for 91% of the global riverine plastic discharge to the sea) considered here include a vast majority of the global pandemic-associated plastic discharge. The top three rivers for pandemic-associated plastic waste discharge are Shatt al Arab (5.2 thousand tons, in Asia), Indus (4.0 thousand tons, in Asia), and Yangtze River (3.7 thousand tons, in Asia) followed by Ganges Brahmaputra (2.4 thousand tons, in Asia), Danube (1.7 thousand tons, in Europe), and Amur (1.2 thousand tons, in Asia). These findings highlight the hotspot rivers and watersheds that require special attention in plastic waste management.

Overall, the top 10 rivers account for 79% of pandemic plastic discharge, top 20 for 91%, and top 100 for 99%. About 73% of the discharge is from Asian rivers followed by Europe (11%), with minor contributions from other continents (Table 1). This pattern is different from that of the generation of MMPW (Table 1) because of the different ability of rivers to export plastic load to the ocean, which is measured as the yield ratio (defined as the ratio between the plastic discharges at the river mouth and the total MMPW generation in the watershed). The yield ratio is influenced by factors such as the distribution of plastic release along rivers and the physical conditions of rivers (e.g., water runoff and velocity) (28). The top five rivers with the highest yield ratios are the Yangtze River (0.9%), Indus (0.5%), Yellow River (0.5%), Nile (0.4%), and Ganges Brahmaputra (0.4%). These rivers have either high population density near the river mouth, large runoff, fast water velocity, or a combination of them. The combination of high pandemic-associated MMPW generations and yield ratio for Asian rivers results in their high discharge of MMPW to the ocean.
The Fate of MMPW in the Ocean.

We simulate the transport and fate of the 25,900 ± 3,800 tons of pandemic-associated plastic waste by the Nanjing University MITgcm-Plastic model (NJU-MP) to evaluate its impact on the marine environment. The model considers the primary processes that plastics undergo in seawater: beaching, drifting, settling, biofouling/defouling, abrasion, and fragmentation (29). The model reveals that a large fraction of the river discharged plastics are transferred from the surface ocean to the beach and seabed within 3 y (Fig. 3). At the end of 2021, the mass fraction of plastics in seawater, seabed, and beach are modeled as 13%, 16%, and 71% respectively. About 3.8% of the plastics are in the surface ocean with a global mean concentration of 9.1 kg/km2. Our model also suggests that the discharged pandemic-associated plastics are mainly distributed in ocean regions relatively close to their sources, for example, middle- and low-latitude rivers distributed in East and South Asia, South Africa, and the Caribbean (Fig. 4 and SI Appendix, Fig. S2). The beaching and sedimentation fluxes are mainly distributed near major river mouths (Fig. 4 and SI Appendix, Fig. S2). This suggests that the short-term impact of pandemic-associated plastics is rather confined in the coastal environment.

Download figure
Open in new tab
Download powerpoint
Fig. 3.

Projection of the fate of discharged pandemic-associated plastics (including both microplastics and macroplastics) in the global ocean. (A) The mass fractions and average concentrations in the surface ocean. (B) The mass fractions in the seawater, seabed, and beaches.


Download figure
Open in new tab
Download powerpoint
Fig. 4.

Modeled spatial distribution of mass concentrations of COVID-19-associated plastics in the surface ocean (A–C, J–L), on the beaches (D–F, M–O), and the seabed (G–I, P–R) in 2021, 2025, and 2100, respectively. The black boxes on the Top panel indicate the five subtropical ocean gyres (North Pacific Gyre, North Atlantic Gyre, South Pacific Gyre, South Atlantic Gyre, and Indian Gyre). Panels A–I are for the microplastics, while J–R are for the macroplastics.


The model suggests the impact could expand to the open ocean in 3 to 4 y. The mass fraction of plastics in the seawater is predicted to decrease in the future while those in seabed and beach are modeled to gradually increase. At the end of 2022, the fractions of riverine discharged, pandemic-associated MMPW in seawater, seabed, and beach are modeled as 5%, 19%, and 76%, respectively, and the mean surface ocean concentration sharply decreases to 3.1kg/km2. In 2025, five garbage patches in the center of subtropic gyres merge, including the four in North and South Atlantic and Pacific and the one in the Indian Ocean (Fig. 4 and SI Appendix, Fig. S2). Hot spots for sedimentation fluxes are also modeled in the high-latitude North Atlantic and the Arctic Ocean in 2025 (Fig. 4 and SI Appendix, Fig. S2), reflecting the large-scale vertical movement of the seawaters (SI Appendix, Fig. S3).

We find a long-lasting impact of the pandemic-associated waste release in the global ocean. At the end of this century, the model suggests that almost all the pandemic-associated plastics end up in either the seabed (28.8%) or beaches (70.5%), potentially hurting the benthic ecosystems. The global mean pandemic-associated plastic concentrations in the surface ocean are predicted to decrease to 0.3 kg/km2 in 2100, accounting for 0.03% of the total discharged plastic mass. However, two garbage patches are still modeled over the northeast Pacific and the southeast Indian Ocean, exerting persistent risk for ecosystems over there. The fate of microplastics and macroplastics are similar but with a higher fraction of macroplastics ending up in the beaches due to their lower mobility (Fig. 4 and SI Appendix, Fig. S1).

The Arctic Ocean appears to be a dead-end for plastic debris transport due to the northern branch of the thermohaline circulation (30). About 80% of the plastic debris discharged into the Arctic Ocean will sink quickly, and a circumpolar plastic accumulation zone is modeled to form by 2025. In this year, the Arctic seabed accounts for 13% of the global plastic sedimentation flux, but this fraction will increase to 17% in 2100. The Arctic ecosystem is considered to be particularly vulnerable due to the harsh environment and high sensitivity to climate change (31, 32), which makes the potential ecological impact of exposure to the projected accumulated Arctic plastics of special concern.

Discussion

It is speculated that the pandemic will not be completely controlled in a couple of years, and many of the containing policies will continue to be implemented (33). By the end of 2021, it is conservatively estimated that the number of confirmed cases will reach 280 million (34). The generated pandemic-associated MMPW will reach a total of 11 million tons, resulting in a global riverine discharge of 34,000 tons to the ocean. The MMPW generation and discharge are expected to be more skewed toward Asia due to record-breaking confirmed cases in India (3). Given the linearity between the discharge and ocean plastic mass, the fate and transport of the newly generated plastic discharge can be deduced from our current results.

There are substantial uncertainties associated with our estimate of pandemic-associated MMPW release due to the lack of accurate data (e.g., the number of used masks and online-shopping packages and the fraction of mismanaged waste under the over-capacity conditions). For example, our estimate for the discharge from face mask usage is much lower than that of Chowdhury et al. (35), which assumes that a person uses a single mask daily while we assume a mask lasts for 6 d based on survey data (Methods). We thus consider multiple scenarios to cap the actual situations (Methods). The estimated MMPW as hospital medical waste varies by ±53%, while that from packaging and PPE vary by ±25% and a factor of ∼3.5, respectively. The estimated amounts of riverine MMPW discharge to the ocean have also uncertainty as they are based on a coarse resolution (i.e., watershed-wise) hydrological model (28). In addition, factors such as the fragmentation, abrasion, and beaching rate of plastics in NJU-MP also have a substantial influence on the simulation results (29). Despite these uncertainties, the spatial pattern of the pandemic-associated releases and their relative fate in different compartments of the ocean is more robust.

The pandemic-associated plastic discharge to the ocean accounts for 1.5 ± 0.2% of the total riverine plastic discharges (28, 36). A large portion of the discharge is medical waste that also elevates the potential ecological and health risk (37) or even the spreading of the COVID-19 virus (38). This offers lessons that waste management requires structural changes. The revoking or delaying of the bans on SUPs may complicate plastic waste control after the pandemic. Globally public awareness of the environmental impact of PPE and other plastic products needs to be increased. Innovative technologies need to be promoted for better plastic waste collection, classification, treatment, and recycling, as well as the development of more environmentally friendly materials (15, 39). Better management of medical waste in epicenters, especially in developing countries, is necessary.

READ ON HERE

Plastic waste release caused by COVID-19 and its fate in the global ocean | PNAS

ROMANIA

‘Danger unites us’: coalminers on the frontline of clean energy

As Romanian mines close, some cannot afford the EU-funded ‘Just Transition’ retraining

Sebastian Tirintică operating machinery inside the mine. 

Photograph: Adrian Catu/The Guardian

Andrada Fiscutean and Ashira Morris

THE GUARDIAN
Wed 10 Nov 2021

Three hundred metres below ground, Sebastian Tirintică operates an elevator at the Livezeni mine in Romania’s Jiu valley. His eyes widen with concentration as he guides the lever to lower the cage, ferrying the iron, wood, and other materials his co-workers need to extract coal. His focus keeps his fellow miners alive, which could be said for everyone working at Livezeni. Most of the equipment is more than 30 years old. Miners go underground knowing that a ceiling support could collapse or that a conveyor belt could snap. In seven years working inside the mine, Tirintică has been buried in coal three times. Each time, his co-workers pulled him out.

“Danger unites us,” he said. “The brotherhood of the underground. You know that your colleague behind you can save your life.”

Miners work inside the Livezeni mine.

 Photograph: Adrian Catu/The Guardian

Outside the mine at an institutional level, he says, there’s no one to watch his back. Coal has been on the decline for 3o years with little else created to replace the lost jobs. In the mid-1990s, 15 mines in the Jiu valley employed 45,000 people. Now, only about 3,000 workers remain in four mines: Livezeni, Vulcan, Lonea, and Lupeni. They are all scheduled to shut by 2030, as Romania strives to meet the EU climate targets. Coal makes up about a fifth of the country’s energy supply, less than wind and solar combined.

But as operations close, people in these monotowns reliant on the coal industry are left with few options other than moving away to find decently paying work. Many have already left. In Tirintică’s five-storey apartment building, almost half of the homes are empty.

“We need something to replace mining jobs with,” Lucian Enculescu, the leader of the Livezeni ‘Libertatea 2008’ union said. “Anything.”

Multiple EU funds will begin to distribute money in an effort to help countries phase out coal and facilitate a “just transition” to clean energy. But currently, only one programme is under way in the valley: a training centre about to open in the city of Petroșani, the closest town to Livezeni. It aims to re-skill 200 people in the next two years as wind turbine technicians. The project is run by the Renewable Energy School of Skills (RESS) with the support of the Romanian Wind Energy Association.

Miners receive training aimed at helping them move into the wind industry. 

Photograph: Adrian Catu/The Guardian

The centre, which began operations at the end of September, is funded through the Human Capital European programme. It is the pilot project of a larger proposal to reskill 8,000 miners and other people in the valley over the next 10 years, a goal that could be achieved using EU funds, said Sebastian Enache, senior managing director of RESS.

“We have the commitment of the industry that those who will graduate from the academy will have priority on the job market,” Enache said.

The one- to four-month training programme, valued at about €8,000 (£6,828), is free for miners to take part in. The course certifies them to work on turbines across Romania and abroad.

“This reskilling programme is maybe the best thing that has happened in the Jiu valley in the past 10 years,” said former miner Adrian Borbel, now a wind energy technician trainer. “Wind energy offers jobs that allow people to support their families, even if there’s only one person working in that family.”

Tirintică and his fellow miners are aware that coal is on its way out and they welcome the new programme, saying they are eager to learn, and that the wind energy jobs suit them. After mining with decades-old machines, the state-of-the-art wind turbine equipment feels like a luxury.

“Many people ask: wouldn’t you be afraid to work on a wind turbine?” he said. “How can I be afraid to work 100m above the ground? Inside the mine, I go 300 metres below ground every day.”

But while there is enthusiasm for the wind energy training programme, miners say it is not perfect. The valley is not suitable for wind energy, so anyone who wants to work in the industry will have to leave. Many miners say the wages offered by the renewable sector are not high enough to compensate them for the time spent away from their families. Tirintică already took a wind industry reskilling course, and said he was offered €1,350 a month take-home pay to work as an entry-level technician. That would be more than the €600-800 he makes at the mine, but it would also mean spending half of the year away from his home and family, giving up on his side hustles and paying rent, possibly in a city with a higher cost of living than the Jiu valley.

The training is designed to provide miners with hands-on experience so their starting salaries can match their mining pay. In time, graduates from the programme could earn up to €5,000 a month, Enache argues. But the necessity of taking time to build a career in renewables collides with the miners’ need to earn money in the short term. Some said that if they have to be away from their family anyway, they might consider taking other better-paid jobs. Working in construction or picking asparagus in Germany pays €2,000-2,800 a month.

For people such as Tirintică, who have families in the valley, mining has always been a profession chosen out of economic logic. He grew up hearing stories about working underground from his father and did not want to join their ranks himself. But since most employers in the region only offer €300-400 a month, he saw the mine as his only route to financial stability.

For decades, the local economy has been dominated by a single industry: coal. The incoming European money aims to diversify the region. Romania can access around €2bn billion from the EU’s Just Transition Fund. That process starts with creating specific plans for the country’s coal regions, including the Jiu valley. The European Commission hired the consulting firm PwC to run the planning process, and the consultants have held multiple meetings and workshops with local stakeholders, including mayors, union leaders, priests, and NGOs. However, the miners say the consultants have not spoken to a single frontline worker.

The most recent draft proposes to remake the economy, build infrastructure, improve quality of life, and support local entrepreneurship. It calls for programmes to attract international investors, to build centres where people could train for careers in technology and other industries, and to develop tourism in the region. How those plans are implemented remains an open question.

“Everybody asks: Why don’t investors come?” said Florin Tiberiu Iacob-Ridzi, mayor of Petroșani. “We are 100km away from any highway. The Jiu valley is a bit isolated.”

Until a strategy is implemented, the miners are left to find solutions on their own, knowing that their employment could end soon. Those close to the retirement age of 45 plan to take the government’s €10,000 buyout, which is periodically offered in a bid to reduce the number of jobs relying on coal. In addition to the lump sum, they rely on the generous pension given for dangerous working conditions. Younger miners are forced to come up with their own backup plans. Some already work second jobs on top of their mining shifts, doing repairs, laying floor tiles, or driving delivery trucks.

Mădălin Brândău, who has been a miner for six years, recently took a wind energy course on working at heights, taught by the same organisation that opens the Petroșani centre. At the moment, he says the mine is the best option and has not signed a contract to transition to renewables yet. He knows, though, Romania’s coal phase-out date is near, and he’s making backup plans.

“I’m preparing for when the mines close,” he said. “I did a welding course. I got my truck driving licence. I took every possible course that was available. When the mines close, I’ll put all my certifications on the table.”

If possible, he wants to stay in his home town, where he is the lead singer of a traditional Romanian band that has other miners.

For now, with few other lucrative jobs, miners such as Tirintică and Brândău continue to go underground hoping they will emerge alive at the end of their shifts.

“As a child, seeing how many accidents and explosions kept happening, I cried into the night praying to God to close the Petrila mine where my father worked,” Brândău said. He has still not told his mother that he works as a rescuer, going inside the most dangerous underground areas to save his colleagues or put out fires.

The wind energy courses in Petroșani will begin by the end of the year, but the Jiu valley’s future remains uncertain.

“We know what we should do,” Iacob-Ridzi, the mayor of Petroșani said. “But nobody knows how we should do it.”


This story was produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center

How the rise of copper reveals clean energy’s dark side

View of the Chino mine from across the valley.

 Photograph: Julie Dermansky/Earthworks


As the world shifts to wind energy and electric cars, demand for the conductive metal has increased. But mining copper brings its own environmental hazards

Supported by


Gitanjali Poonia for New Mexico In Depth; Graphics by Aliya Uteuova
Tue 9 Nov 2021 10.00 GMT
This story is co-published by New Mexico In Depth and Guardian US

Corky Stewart, a retired geologist, and his wife live in a rural subdivision in New Mexico’s Grant county, about a mile north of the sprawling Tyrone copper mine

“We’ve been here three years and we’ve heard four blasts,” Stewart said of the mine, one of four on an expanse of land partitioned into dozens of four-acre lots. From his perspective, the blasts don’t seem unreasonable, given that a mining company owns the property and has the right to do what it wants.

But he didn’t know when he bought the property that the company would propose a new pit called the Emma B just a half-mile from the wells he and his wife depend on for drinking water. “If they were to somehow tap into our aquifer and drain our water supply, then our houses become valueless,” he said.

“We’re not making any effort to prevent the pit from being built,” he said. “All we’re really asking is for them to give us some commitment that they will fix whatever they do to our water supply.” But the mine, owned by the company Freeport-McMoRan, refuses to give them this assurance, he said. Freeport-McMoRan did not respond to multiple requests for comment by New Mexico In Depth and the Guardian.

The company’s effort to expand comes as the US expects to invest in energy sources that are cleaner than fossil fuels, and the global demand for copper rises. Copper conducts electricity, bends easily, and is recyclable – which makes it a critical material for most forms of renewable energy, from wind and solar to electric vehicles.

But when “clean energy” relies on the extraction of metals like copper, it can also pollute the surrounding environment.

The Chino mine, also known as the Santa Rita mine, is an open-pit copper mine in the town of Santa Rita, New Mexico, 15 miles east of Silver City. 

Photograph: Julie Dermansky/Earthworks

While Freeport-McMoRan touts sustainability practices and other measures taken to reduce the company’s own greenhouse gas emissions, there’s little doubt that copper mining poses significant risks to communities on the ground, threatening everything from water access to air quality to Indigenous cultural sites.

Companies dig huge holes into the ground, going deeper than the water table. Heavy machinery kicks up dust, polluting the air. Chemicals are used to leach the mineral out of ore, and exposed water is forever contaminated. Some operations, like Freeport’s Tyrone mine, will have to pump water in perpetuity, even after there is no longer copper to be found, so that contaminated water from the mine site doesn’t flow back into the wider water table.

Chris Berry, an independent analyst focused on energy metals, said the push for clean energy is a big reason for increased demand for copper, which is estimated to grow by 350% by 2050 if the world moves towards clean energy. Its price nearly doubled from 2019 to 2020 in the US.

That’s partly because copper’s role in the transition to clean energy cannot be overstated. “We’re really going to have to re-engineer the electricity grid to make it cleaner and greener and more efficient. And that’s going to take a lot more copper, and copper mining.”

This reality puts environmentalists like Allyson Siwik, executive director of the Gila Resources Information Project, a local environmental advocacy organization in Grant county, in a tricky spot.

“We are trying to transition to a clean energy economy, right?” said Siwik. “So we obviously are very supportive of that.” However, she adds, “the increase in global demand for these metals is very disconcerting to me. You know, it’s frontline communities like us here in Grant county that bear the cost of the increased exploration, expansion of mining.”

Tucked away in rural areas of Grant county in south-western New Mexico, the vast Chino and Tyrone copper mines owned by Freeport-McMoRan don’t garner much attention in the state’s metropolitan center. But the state ranks third in copper production nationally, and the mines employ more than 1,300 people. As demand for copper increases, local employment could grow.


Freeport-McMoRan is betting on it.

The company’s 2020 annual report estimates that the demand for copper will double in the next five years as a result of growth in electric vehicles and renewable technology.

“There is an increased interest to mine copper at both existing and proposed mines to support clean energy,” Holland Shepherd, manager of the mining act reclamation program at New Mexico’s department of energy, minerals, and natural resources, said in an email.

In Sierra county, another mining company is proposing to reboot the Copper Flat mine, which briefly operated in the early 1980s before prices fell and it shut down. Themac Resources is applying for a 12-year mining permit, which also requires acquisition of enough water rights to satisfy state regulators.
Advertisement


Nearby, residents of the village of Hillsboro are concerned.

“We depend on our wells here in town for all our water,” said Gary Gritzbaugh, who has lived in Hillsboro for 25 years and is the president of the Hillsboro Mutual Domestic Water Consumers Association. The small water association serves 80 to 90 customers and has operated for more than half a century. “It is a good system,” he said, but he’s deeply concerned that the mine will drain or contaminate their wells.

Gritzbaugh said that while engineers from the mining company reassured the town that contaminated water from the mine won’t reach Hillsboro’s water supply, he isn’t certain. “Groundwater is just an underground river, it goes wherever it wants to go. People say, well, it’s not going to drain this way, it’s going to drain towards Rio Grande. Well, maybe, maybe not.”

For environmentalists set on reducing carbon emissions, there are no easy solutions to the threat that mining for copper and other essential minerals poses for communities like Hillsboro or rural residents like Stewart.

Noah Long, the western region director of the climate and clean energy program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said that without an energy transition, there will be devastating consequences, some of which are already surfacing. “We can’t afford to wait,” he said. But he noted the need for adequate regulation of mines, as well as reusing and then recycling electric vehicle batteries.

Establishing a market to recycle electric vehicle batteries – which can last a dozen or more years – could help reduce demand for copper and rein in mining operations in areas like New Mexico, where copper ore is abundant.

“We need to shift to a policy that creates clear incentives for recycling,” said Aimee Boulanger, the executive director of the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance. She noted that extracting metals is now more profitable than recycling them.

In 2020, an estimated 35% of copper was recycled in the US, and about a third of total global demand is met with recycled copper. But electric vehicle battery recycling is minimal. Electric vehicle batteries contain copper, nickel, cobalt and lithium; of these, cobalt and nickel are usually recoverable for new batteries, but lithium and copper are captured for use in other industries or products, or lost in the process.

When lead-acid batteries came into the picture in 1859, they were rarely recycled – but now they are easily broken down for reuse. This could be the blueprint for electric vehicle batteries. China has already issued provisional regulations that encourage manufacturers to set up networks for collecting and recycling used batteries. The EU has a drafted act that tackles sustainable batteries.

If electric vehicles are the alternative to oil-guzzling cars, then their impact – from the mining and extraction of raw materials needed to build them to managing the waste from that process – should be addressed, said Boulanger. “And we need to make sure that we’re working to reduce that impact.”

Encouraging automakers and electronics companies to work with suppliers who source minerals responsibly is also important, environmentalists say. At the end of the day, such mines won’t ever be 100% safe, said Siwik, who recently joined Indigenous tribes and environmental groups calling on the federal government to revise hardrock mining regulations.

“We need to demand the maximum amount of environmental protection, that mines are following best management practices and being as protective as possible.” That means lining stockpiles, preventing toxic pollutants from entering groundwater, mitigating air quality impacts, and ensuring that mines reclaim the land as soon as a particular mining area is used up.

Allyson Siwik, executive director of the Gila Resources Information Project, next to Chino mine’s tailing pond. 

Photograph: Julie Dermansky/Earthworks

Encouraging automakers and electronics companies to work with suppliers who source minerals responsibly is also important.

Siwik suggests an accreditation standard awarded by the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance (IRMA) for scoring companies’ mining practices.

IRMA was developed independently of other standards adopted by mining industry associations. It uses public audits based on social and environmental responsibility, business integrity, and what it calls “planning for positive legacies” to measure performance. The results, reviewed by an independent auditor, are released with details about the mining operation, visited facilities and interviews that the auditors conducted with company representatives from across different departments.

The public audit covers “everything from protecting Indigenous people’s rights, to biodiversity and water, to worker health and safety”, said Boulanger. IRMA has already conducted public audits of a platinum mine in Zimbabwe and a lead-zinc mine in Mexico.

Tiffany’s, BMW and Ford Motors have already committed to sourcing responsibly, so if a mine wants to be a part of these supply chains, they would have to adhere to high standards, said Boulanger.

But environmentalists worry that copper mining giants in New Mexico will be reluctant to follow such standards.

Last year, Freeport-McMoRan announced its commitment to another standard, the Copper Mark Responsible Production Framework. Designed specifically for copper operations, it was developed by the International Copper Association, an influential trade group. This standard does not give governance and voting power to affected communities, organized labor, non-governmental environment or human rights organizations, like IRMA’s multi-stakeholder system does. But Copper Mark does issue reports based on sustainability standards. And according to Shepherd, of the state energy, minerals, and natural resources department, the Copper Mark and another standard created by the industry-led Council on Mining and Metals are both good.

But communities affected by mine operations are often skeptical of data and reports provided by industry.

When the company assures him that the water polluted by the proposed Emma B mine won’t reach his water wells, Stewart is unconvinced. “It’s the mine providing the data, right?” he said. “They’re the ones paying an expert and you know, if you want an expert to say something, [you can] just pay him money.”

Once the company has the permit, the only recourse residents like Stewart would have in the event of water contamination would be suing in court, which takes significant financial resources, he said.

“I can’t afford to hire my own hydrology firm and lawyers and all this,” says Stewart.