"Canada needs to build a lot of mines “in a very short period” if it wants internal supplies of metals necessary for the electric-vehicle revolution, a new report warns.
According to the International Energy Agency, the world will need another 50 lithium mines by 2030 if international targets related to EVs are to be met.
It will also need 60 new nickel mines, 17 cobalt mines and hundreds of other mines adding up to a total of 388 new projects.
But only 70 metal mines are operational in Canada and 270 in the US, prompting the Fraser Institute to warn of a “significant risk” that EV targets could be missed.
'The sheer scale of mining required to meet EV mandates raises serious questions about the timelines being imposed by governments," said Kenneth Green, senior fellow at the Fraser Institute and author of the think tank's report."
Fraser Institute Report: Can metal mining match the speed of the planned electric vehicle transition
GRAFTA Commentary
This recent report highlights the urgent need to expand the mining sector in Canada and other countries, and with this need with be an increased requirement for suitable environmental remediation.
With much of the proposed areas of development, such as the Ring of Fire in Northern Ontario, being in remote and hard to access areas with oftentimes pristine surrounding environments there will be a significant need for effective solutions to ensure that the quality of the environment does not significant suffer from long term legacy issues from the mineral and resource operations.
Passive technologies such as GRAFTA can play an integral part in the future development of many of these mines, offering long term contaminant removal and environmental remediation to ensure operations are in compliance with the increasingly strict environmental regulations.
The low capital costs and the ability to be deployed in mobile systems in remote and hard to access areas will allow such technologies to provide the high level of contaminant removal required to operate many of these mines with confidence in the minimal levels of environmental damage and long term legacy contamination issues.