The future of carbon management is digital

Carbon neutrality goals worldwide are being propelled by new government initiatives, improved regulatory frameworks, and heightened customer awareness and scrutiny. Several countries now leading the green revolution have also announced grants and aid for businesses and end users that promote the development of low- and zero-carbon technologies and their rapid adoption.

Affected industries – with mining being no exception – are in a mad dash to make use of developing technologies for carbon assessment and emissions reduction.

Carbon capture and sequestration, low-carbon materials, green fuels and renewable energy all stand to gain by the booming carbon management market that has sprung up to assist world leaders and multinational corporations in realizing collective net-zero goals.

"Environmental sustainability cannot be the responsibility of just a few industries – if our climate is to be protected, sustainable business must be a global priority," said Annette Zimmermann, research vice president at Gartner, a tech insights consulting firm based in Connecticut, "The transition to a net-zero economy will be as disruptive as the industrial revolution or the digital revolution, requiring new technologies, business models, strategies and processes."

For manufacturers and service providers developing underpinning technologies to facilitate sustainable business, there are three official categories of carbon emissions impacting industry – direct emissions from owned or controlled sources (Scope 1), indirect emissions from purchased energy generation (Scope 2), and value chain emissions that are far more challenging to measure because they include both upstream and downstream emissions, which can account for over 95% of many companies' total carbon footprint (Scope 3).

"Ultimately, every organization will have to invest in carbon accounting tools," said Zimmermann. "Software solutions which provide transparent carbon measurement and actionable advice are seeing rapid adoption, and Gartner expects continued growth as integration capabilities progress."

Counting carbon

Ivalua, a U.S.-based spend management company to watch, has developed the Environmental Impact Center (EIC), a software tool that assesses value chain emissions and enables transparent reporting standards.

After reviewing the software, the online procurement journal Spend Matter wrote, "Ivalua is one of the few truly integrated suites available on the market, and it sets the benchmark in terms of configurability, especially with regard to self-service configuration for processes/workflow, business rules and UI. Continued strong execution makes it a perennial 'To Know' and this year in particular has seen the introduction of well-designed tools for carbon emissions calculation and decarbonization management, among many other improvements."

Incorporating EIC into a mine's procurement procedures allows better decision-making through use of highly accurate emissions data when sourcing products and services from end to end, direct and indirect, from equipment and vehicles to software and support.

One user of Ivalua's platform is Imerys, which provides mineral-based specialty solutions for global industry.

Imerys supports a diverse range of sectors, from construction and automotive to consumer goods, while fostering the emergence of environmentally friendly products and processes.

Cloud footprints

Over the next few years, it is anticipated that cloud network providers will need to present potential clientele with increasingly transparent climate strategies in compliance with socioeconomic standards and expectations. By 2025, the carbon emissions of cloud services will likely be a top criterion in purchase decisions.

Toward this transparency, the UK-based telecom company BT Group announced in January of this year that it had launched two digital solutions to assist in accurately identifying and reducing the carbon footprint of companies' network-based apps and cloud workloads.

BT Group provides information technology solutions to global mining giants such as Anglo American, Glencore and others. This product launch is in keeping with the group's pledge to help customers avoid 60 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions by 2030.

BT's Carbon Network Dashboard provides real-time power consumption details, using machine learning to predict anomalies based on historic usage and the user's unique network inventory.

This dashboard identifies which devices consume the most power, forecasts total energy use and how it translates into carbon emissions using carbon intensity and renewable energy data from regional power grids and measures the amount of greenhouse gases emitted per unit of electricity produced.

BT's second device is the Digital Carbon Calculator, which helps users determine carbon impact by analyzing network inventory responsiveness over time to changes and upgrades. The Calculator also provides lifecycle management, identifying devices that have reached the end of their service and need to be replaced.

"With customers hosting more of their applications across multiple clouds, networks are now increasingly vital for all elements of business performance, including carbon impact," said Sarwar Khan, global head of digital sustainability at BT Group. "Our new tools empower customers to reduce their Scope 3 emissions by optimizing their network or scheduling digital workloads when renewable energy is available, helping them to achieve their net zero goals."

Carbon management in mining is an organized approach using cost-effective technologies and practices to streamline products and services already in use, helping enterprising companies tackle climate change by quickly capitalizing on solutions that reduce costs along with environmental impacts, increase efficiency, and bring the industry, as a whole, closer to the reality of a low-carbon, circular economy.