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New Benchmark Study Highlights Impacts of Nickel and Cobalt Mining on Critical Forested Carbon Sinks Amid Battery Metals Boom
Commissioned by TMC, Benchmark Mineral Intelligence assessed the impact of mining on terrestrial carbon sinks in top nickel and cobalt producing regions In 2022
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[{"type":"text","content":" Commissioned by TMC, Benchmark Mineral Intelligence assessed the impact of mining on terrestrial carbon sinks in top nickel and cobalt producing regions In 2022, 75% of the world’s cobalt production came from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and 50% of the world’s nickel production came from Indonesia. Both DRC and Indonesia are megadiverse countries and conservation hotspots The carbon model developed by Benchmark quantifies the magnitude of carbon stocks and carbon sequestration services loss due to mining of cobalt in the region of Katanga, DRC and nickel in Sulawesi, Indonesia The study finds that 1 kg of nickel mined from saprolite and limonite ore in Sulawesi removes forests containing carbon stock equivalent to 7.0 and 9.4 kg of CO2e, and 1 kg of cobalt mined in Katanga removes 3.6 kg of CO2e. Resulting vegetation change also causes carbon sequestration services loss of 4.8g and 6.5g of CO2e respectively for nickel, and 9.3g of CO2e for cobalt per year. NEW YORK, Nov. 29, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- TMC the metals company Inc. (“TMC” or “The Metals Company”), an explorer of lower-impact battery metals from seafloor polymetallic nodules, today announced that leading lithium-ion battery supply chain research firm, Benchmark Mineral Intelligence (“Benchmark”), has completed an independent third-party study of how terrestrial cobalt mining in the woodland forests of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and nickel mining in the rainforests of Indonesia impact terrestrial carbon sinks. The full study can be downloaded here and a summary document here. While awareness is growing of the direct carbon emissions from metals mining and processing, lifecycle assessments do not often assess the impacts of land-use change on carbon sinks in specific regions. The new Benchmark study complements their earlier independent third-party lifecycle assessment where the environmental impacts of TMC’s planned NORI-D Polymetallic Nodule Project are compared to the lifecycle impacts of key-land based production routes for nickel, cobalt and copper [see full report ; summary ]. Benchmark focused on DRC (75% of the world’s cobalt production in 2022) and Indonesia (50% of the world’s nickel production in 2022) and set out to quantify the loss of carbon stocks and sequestration services caused by the mining of cobalt in the region ...