Well-run, profitable and successful businesses are often efficient. As we have seen with recent supply chain disruptions and volatile energy prices, the cost of goods and services may fluctuate and change over time, so ensuring that those areas we can control – mine and facility design, equipment selection and operating practices – are as efficient as possible is crucial for our long-term success.
An important, and growing, aspect of our overall efforts to make our operations more efficient is improving our eco-efficiency – that is, doing more with less. This involves implementing processes to track and improve the use of resources and to minimize our overall environmental footprint. There is a growing expectation among stakeholders, including some investors, that we demonstrate that we have processes in place, are measuring and tracking our performance, and are integrating eco-efficiency considerations into our investment decisions and business planning processes.
By tracking several eco-efficiency metrics – including energy use, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, water withdrawal and reuse, waste generation and reuse, and land newly disturbed or restored – we have a greater understanding of our activities and impacts. Based on our performance, we can see areas where we need to improve and can adjust our production methods or adopt new technologies to reduce our use of resources.
Because new projects, expansions and upgrades offer one of the best opportunities to address eco-efficiency, we updated our Authorization of Expenditure (AFE) process (the method we follow for approving funding requests for large projects or equipment) to incorporate eco-efficiency considerations.
Eco-efficiency may not be the primary consideration of many of our investments, but it may be a benefit. For example, if we are looking to purchase mining equipment, evaluating that investment’s eco-efficiency metrics may result in our selecting equipment that can lower our GHG emissions while also reducing our fuel costs and increasing production.
Other benefits from tracking eco-efficiency metrics in the AFE process include:
- Making visible which investments are increasing efficiencies and/or reducing our environmental impacts
- Encouraging a broader evaluation of alternatives based on technical efficiencies as well as cost
- Establishing a record of what projects have resulted in ecoefficiencies so that we can replicate our success, continuously improve and transparently report our efforts to investors and other stakeholders