Global energy consumption of the mineral mining industry: Exploring the historical perspective and future pathways to 2060

The mining industry globally is responsible for significant energy consumption, and is an important source of greenhouse gas emissions. Considering that future mineral demand is likely to increase and that the final energy consumption per unit mass of mineral extracted (energy intensities of mining) is also forecast to increase as a result of a decrease in mineral resource deposit qualities, the mining industry’s final energy consumption will increase in the future. But the scale of that future increase remains unexplored. In this study, we (i) provide the first bottom-up assessment of the mining industry’s final energy consumption globally (1971–2015), (ii) use 1.5°C consistent socio-economic scenarios to conduct an exploratory study of future possible pathways for the mining industry’s final energy consumption, and (iii) review the extent to which such energy consumption is considered in energy-economy models.

We find that the mining industry is currently responsible for approximately 1.7% of global final energy consumption. However, the mining industry’s final energy consumption is likely to increase significantly, by a factor in the range 2–8 by 2060, depending on the future economic trajectory, on the evolution of energy intensities, and on future recycling rates. We also find that mineral material flows and their associated energy requirements (including the mining industry’s energy consumption) are insufficiently covered in many energy-economy models. Our work suggests that the limited representation of material flows and associated energy requirements is currently an important blind spot in energy-economy modelling and may hinder the efforts of the community to build consistent energy transition pathways.