EnviroGold Global’s ‘Metals without Mining’ business model to reduce GHG emissions

EnviroGold Global’s circular-economy business model is designed to produce precious, critical and strategic metals while reprocessing mine waste (tailings). Tailings are the by-product of mining and mineral processing and often contain significant quantities of valuable precious, critical and strategic metals. EnviroGold Global’s analytics-driven approach to project origination and development leverages extensive mine production data, mill production data and geological records to identify tailings sites that are expected to contain significant quantities of residual metals due to refractory mineralogy and/or to the inefficiency of outdated technology used during legacy mining operations. In addition to recovering precious, critical and strategic metals, the company remediates the tailings consistent with environmental best practices, thereby reducing the environmental footprint of legacy mining. Further, by eliminating the extractive phase (mining) of metal production, the company expects to reduce the energy intensity of metal production by over 80%.

Leveraging the framework set forth by the World Resources Institute’s Greenhouse Gas Protocol, EnviroGold Global’s detailed assessments of expected Scope I and Scope II emissions for the company’s planned operations at the Hellyer and Buchans Tailings Reprocessing Projects indicate that the carbon intensity of the gold-equivalent ounces of precious, critical and strategic metals produced by the company will be 96% lower than industry averages for conventional mining. S&P Global Market Intelligence reports that the typical conventional mining operations generated nearly 1 t of carbon dioxide per gold ounce produced.

EnviroGold Global CEO, Dr Mark Thorpe, said: “Whether serving as critical components for batteries, electric vehicles and clean-energy infrastructure, or as a store of value and hedge against inflation, metals have never been more critical to the modern, global circular economy. EnviroGold Global’s Metals Without Mining business model is designed to sustainably satisfy the world’s increasing demand for precious, critical and strategic metals by eliminating the most carbon and energy intensive phases of metal production, creating a win-win for corporate, community and environmental stakeholders.”

The Global Tailings Review reports that the total number of active, inactive and closed tailings storage facilities worldwide exceeds 8500. The global footprint of tailings exceeds 280 billion t with an additional 12.7 billion tpy produced. The value of precious, critical and strategic metals contained in global tailings sites is estimated to exceed US$3.4 trillion.

EnviroGold Global’s commercial strategy involves identifying, qualifying and developing tailings reprocessing opportunities, generally targeting tailings sites with at least 6 million t of tailings and gross recoverable metal value of US$124/t of tailings. Tailings sites meeting EnviroGold Global’s internal assessment criteria pass through an advanced screening process which includes detailed technical/economic modelling incorporating expected recovery rates and site-specific process-level economic analysis.

The company has reviewed over 325 global tailings sites to date and has eight ‘major projects’ in its global tailings reprocessing portfolio. EnviroGold Global expects to commence commercial metal production in 2022 at its Hellyer Tailings Reprocessing Project in Australia. The company will continue to acquire the rights to tailings reprocessing opportunities around the globe and subsequent to achieving commercial metal production at the Hellyer project will leverage strategic operating partnerships to scale up commercial metal production at multiple projects simultaneously.

Read the article online at: https://www.globalminingreview.com/environment-sustainability/08032022/envirogold-globals-metals-without-mining-business-model-to-reduce-ghg-emissions/