The history of the mining and energy sectors is one of shifting overlap and interdependence. Although the earliest mining activities are known to have commenced tens of thousands of years ago, primarily for the production of pottery, weaponry, jewellery and currency, the use of fossil fuels for energy generation is much more recent. Recent studies have found that the earliest organised, large-scale use of coal as a source of energy was in northwestern China, approximately 3,600 years ago. The first recorded uses of oil are from around 5,000 years ago in the Middle East, when the Babylonians in modern-day Iraq used it to waterproof boats and as mortar in building construction. The full potential of oil as we know it today began in the mid-19th century, with the discovery of the world’s first commercially viable oil well in the US.
Accordingly, for thousands of years, the energy sector and part of the mining sector (specifically, coal mining) were closely interrelated. It was only in more recent times that the sectors diverged and developed in parallel, with the exponential growth in demand and production of crude oil and natural gas as fuel sources.
We are now at the precipice of another revolution, this time of the energy industry itself. An energy system that is to be powered by clean and renewable energy technologies is profoundly different from one powered by fossil fuels. At the 2023 UN Climate Change Conference (known as “COP 28”), governments across the globe agreed for the first time on the need to transition away from fossil fuels to limit global warming to 1.50C. This target was agreed by governments at the 2015 conference and is known as the Paris Agreement. To meet the objectives of the Paris Agreement, COP 28 also recognized that an exponential growth in zero- and low-carbon fuels will be required by or before 2050 to sufficiently reduce carbon emissions.
Critical minerals are essential to the manufacture of clean energy technologies and therefore lie at the heart of this energy transition. Accordingly, the mining and energy industries are set to become co-dependent once more, although this time in a more complex manner due to the variety of minerals required for clean energy technologies.
