{"id":61932,"date":"2024-01-31T11:06:54","date_gmt":"2024-01-31T19:06:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/energi.media\/?p=61932"},"modified":"2024-01-31T11:06:54","modified_gmt":"2024-01-31T19:06:54","slug":"the-climate-case-for-a-career-in-mining","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/energi.media\/news\/the-climate-case-for-a-career-in-mining\/","title":{"rendered":"The climate case for a career in mining"},"content":{"rendered":"

This article was published by Grist<\/a> on Jan. 31, 2024.<\/em><\/p>\n

By Maddie Stone<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Mansur Arief never imagined himself working in mining. As an artificial intelligence researcher finishing a PhD at Carnegie Mellon University, he developed safety algorithms for self-driving cars. But then he took a\u00a0postdoctoral position<\/a>\u00a0at Stanford University, where he met\u00a0Jef Caers<\/a>, the director of the new research program\u00a0Mineral-X<\/a>. Caers\u2019 program\u00a0seeks to reinvent mining<\/a>\u00a0for the clean energy economy by using advanced data science tools to help companies find and extract critical minerals like lithium in a more sustainable manner \u2014 and by developing protocols to\u00a0engage local communities<\/a>\u00a0at the exploration phase, so they can decide whether or not new mining should be permitted on their land.<\/p>\n

Arief was fascinated to discover that his skillset \u2014 developing AI algorithms that make complex decisions from real-world data \u2014 could be applied to searching for the minerals desperately needed to build out clean energy technology. (From 2017 to 2022,\u00a0demand for nickel and lithium<\/a>, which are essential components in the batteries that power electric vehicles, jumped by 40 per cent and 300 per cent, respectively.) He\u2019s currently involved in a Mineral-X project focused on the strategic design of critical mineral supply chains for the United States. Eventually he hopes to take on a larger role in another early-stage project that aims to reduce the mining sector\u2019s carbon footprint in his home country, Indonesia.<\/p>\n

\u201cI believe this is a new field that requires lots of attention, and it has huge potential moving forward,\u201d Arief told Grist.<\/p>\n

However, Arief\u2019s interest in mining makes him an outlier among young professionals.\u00a0In the U.S.<\/a>, as well as other mining powerhouses like\u00a0Australia<\/a>\u00a0and Canada, the mining industry is facing an unprecedented\u00a0workforce crisis<\/a> as today\u2019s youth choose not to pursue careers in a sector they see as stagnant, hidebound, and out of touch with their values. Enrolment in university programs that train mining experts is cratering, and companies are struggling to attract new talent to replace their aging staff. The blue collar mining workforce of drillers, machine operators, and others who actually extract the minerals faces challenges, too. To beef up domestic critical minerals mining, the U.S. will likely need more of these laborers. It remains to be seen whether there are enough young people willing to replace mine workers on the brink of retirement today, much less grow the workforce to meet skyrocketing demand.<\/p>\n

\u201cMining, and anything related to mining right now, is less attractive on average to young people,\u201d\u00a0Jim Faulds<\/a>, who directs the Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology, told Grist.<\/p>\n

The mining industry\u2019s poor reputation has arguably been earned. In many parts of the world, the industry has\u00a0devastated local ecosystems<\/a>,\u00a0upended Indigenous communities<\/a>, and\u00a0exploited its workers<\/a>. Yet in order to meet international targets for slowing climate change, the world needs enormous amounts of lithium, cobalt, copper, nickel, and other metals that are key ingredients in clean energy technologies. Securing these commodities could mean opening\u00a0hundreds of new mines<\/a>\u00a0worldwide.<\/p>\n

To meet this need, the industry is racing to address shortages of young experts with the technical skills needed to discover mineral deposits, develop mines, and operate extraction sites. That includes the\u00a0geoscientists<\/a>\u00a0who identify and characterize mineral deposits to help companies determine if they are economical to mine, the mining engineers who determine the best way to get mineral-rich rocks out of the ground, and the metallurgists tasked with separating minerals of interest, like cobalt, from everything else inside those rocks. Across each of these specialized fields, Faulds said, the mining industry is feeling a workforce squeeze.<\/p>\n

New workers \u201care getting scooped up immediately,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

That sort of hiring demand, Faulds said, usually translates to increased enrolment in the\u00a0 technical training programs that churn out these professionals. But that\u2019s not what\u2019s happening. According to the American Geosciences Institute<\/a>, a nonprofit umbrella organization for geoscience professional associations, 27 per cent of the existing geosciences workforce is expected to retire by 2029. Without enough new graduates to replace them, the organization projects a shortage of approximately 130,000 workers by the same year.<\/p>\n

Not all of those lost geoscientists would have worked in mining. But given that the number of students completing degrees in mining disciplines has been\u00a0falling for years<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 alongside the number of\u00a0new faculty hires<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0university mining programs<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 experts believe a talent shortage is coming into view.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnecdotally, I expect there to be a shortage [of economic geologists] in the near future if not already,\u201d\u00a0Graham Lederer<\/a>, a researcher with the U.S. Geological Survey\u2019s Geology, Energy, and Minerals Science Center in Reston, Virginia, told Grist. \u201cMining engineering and extractive metallurgy are facing similar, if not more severe, workforce issues.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed, the number of mining engineering degrees awarded in the U.S. has fallen 39 per cent since 2016, according to a 2023 report<\/a>\u00a0by the consulting firm McKinsey & Company, while the number of mining and mineral engineering programs nationwide has fallen from 25 in 1982 to just\u00a014 today<\/a>. The trends are so stark that Deborah Ross, a member of Congress representing central North Carolina, raised the problem at a\u00a0recent Congressional hearing<\/a>\u00a0on establishing domestic supply chains of critical minerals, noting \u201cwe\u2019ll likely not have the workforce \u2026 to fulfill our national mineral needs.\u201d Earlier this month, the National Academies of Sciences\u00a0hosted a workshop<\/a>\u00a0to discuss how the U.S. can meet the workforce needs of the domestic minerals sector.<\/p>\n

The problem isn\u2019t limited to the U.S. Australia is the world\u2019s\u00a0top producer<\/a> of the lithium needed for electric vehicle batteries, but interest in mining engineering has plunged even more precipitously there, with program enrolment falling 63 per cent since 2014. In Canada, a top producer of the battery metal nickel, 70 per cent<\/a> of young people who responded to a recent poll said that they \u201cprobably\u201d or \u201cdefinitely\u201d wouldn\u2019t consider a career in mining \u2014 higher than the percentage who said they wouldn\u2019t consider careers in oil and gas. The UK\u2019s mining workforce is also aging fast: According to a 2022 report<\/a> by the nation\u2019s Mining Education Forum, a staggering 80 per cent of mining and mineral processing engineers are now over the age of 50.<\/p>\n

There are a host of reasons mining has lost its luster. But a key factor experts emphasized in interviews with Grist is the industry\u2019s reputation for polluting the planet and exploiting its workers, in a quest to dig up things we either don\u2019t need or that are actively harmful.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe mining industry keeps mining coal and diamonds and gold to make money,\u201d Caers, the Mineral-X director, told Grist. \u201cPeople don\u2019t want to get involved in that.\u201d<\/p>\n

A mining engineer by training, Caers\u00a0cut all ties<\/a>\u00a0with the oil and gas sector in 2022 to focus on critical minerals for the energy transition. He believes new technology, combined with strong environmental stewardship and socially responsible development, is key to reinvigorating youth interest in mining. Many of the students Caers works with, like Arief, have a background in computer science or artificial intelligence, and are now learning how their skills can be used to help locate new deposits of critical minerals in the enormous datasets collected by geologists.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is, in fact, a lot of interest in critical minerals, and there\u2019s lots of interest in using new technology,\u201d Caers said. \u201cBut the mining industry doesn\u2019t tap into that enthusiasm.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to failing to prioritize critical minerals extraction over cash-cow commodities like gold, Caers feels that the industry at large isn\u2019t advertising itself enough on university campuses like Stanford, which have a large number of tech-savvy students who want to work on climate solutions.<\/p>\n

A few startups are bucking the trend. The most prominent is\u00a0KoBold Metals<\/a>, a Bill Gates-backed minerals exploration company and Silicon Valley\u2019s first mining\u00a0unicorn<\/a>, a term for a privately held startup valued at over a billion dollars. KoBold, an industrial affiliate of Mineral-X that has financially backed the latter and collaborated on its research, is developing machine learning and artificial intelligence tools to scour the Earth\u2019s crust for new deposits of lithium, copper, cobalt, and nickel. Its staff of about 200 employees includes roughly equal numbers of geoscientists, data scientists, and software engineers, according to KoBold president Josh Goldman. While a few years back recruiters at KoBold might have needed to spend a lot of time explaining why the company\u2019s mission mattered, today \u201cit\u2019s in the zeitgeist,\u201d according to Goldman.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverybody\u2019s worried about lithium supply, everybody\u2019s worried about copper,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Goldman acknowledged that potential young hires often have \u201csome hitches about joining a mining company.\u201d But he said KoBold is typically able to assuage their concerns by explaining its\u00a0ethical principles<\/a>, which include only doing exploration and extraction in places where it can get strong community buy-in. \u201cThat is a very frequent topic of conversation,\u201d Goldman said.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
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\"A
Nth Cycle\u2019s standalone facility in Fairfield, Ohio, is expected to begin full-scale deployment of its metal refining technology before summer 2024.\u00a0Courtesy of Nth Cycle<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>
Another startup that\u2019s bringing young people into the mining sector is Nth Cycle. It works with both mining and recycling companies to extract critical minerals from scrap metal, electronic waste, and mine waste using its novel \u201celectro-extraction\u201d technology<\/a>, which replaces traditional high-heat smelting with an electricity-driven filtration process to separate and refine metals. Company founder and CEO Megan O\u2019Connor says that the company\u2019s 35-person staff is composed mainly of fresh-out-of-college engineers who \u201cnever thought that they would ever be in mining.\u201d But Nth Cycle\u2019s mission of developing more sustainable approaches to extracting and recycling the metals needed for the clean energy transition struck a chord with them.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cWe are sustainability [and] circular-economy-related, but focus on doing that for the mining industry,\u201d O\u2019Connor told Grist. (O\u2019Connor was a\u00a02022 Grist Fixer<\/a>.) \u201cThat\u2019s definitely how we\u2019ve seen people get excited.\u201d<\/p>\n

But these startups are the exception rather than the norm in an industry dominated by large multinational firms that mine a wide variety of commodities worldwide and tend to adhere to local labor and environmental standards, even when\u00a0those standards<\/a>\u00a0are poor<\/a>. And it remains to be seen whether the broader mining industry can clean up its act enough to attract the young talent needed to support the energy transition \u2014 especially in more traditional fields like economic geology and mining engineering.<\/p>\n

Finding top-tier geologists with years of experience in mineral exploration \u201cis pretty difficult already,\u201d Goldman said, citing a \u201ctalent drain\u201d from the industry in the 2010s when new, high-quality discoveries\u00a0dwindled<\/a>\u00a0and major mining companies reduced their exploration efforts. As KoBold begins to develop its first mine \u2014 an underground\u00a0copper and cobalt mine in Zambia<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 it\u2019s already struggling to find local experts with the skills to design and build it, Goldman said.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor us, it\u2019s important not to just have global talent in mine design and mine building, but Zambian talent in leading that project,\u201d Goldman said. But with the nation not having built a large new underground mine in decades, \u201cthat\u2019s really hard.\u201d<\/p>\n

As hiring challenges loom in the U.S. as well, lawmakers are stepping in to try to bolster the nation\u2019s workforce: A provision in the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act\u00a0calls on<\/a>\u00a0the National Science Foundation to make new funding opportunities available to train undergraduate and graduate students in mining engineering, while a\u00a0bipartisan bill<\/a>\u00a0introduced in the Senate last year, the Mining Schools Act of 2023, would require the Department of Energy establish a grant program to support domestic mining education. (The bill\u00a0hasn\u2019t passed<\/a>\u00a0out of committee yet.) Faulds, of the Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology, called the Mining Schools Act \u201ca start\u201d but warned that the\u00a0$10 million in funds<\/a>\u00a0the bill authorizes every year for eight years isn\u2019t a \u201chuge amount\u201d when spread across the entire country.<\/p>\n

In addition to technical experts, the mining industry will need blue collar workers to support additional critical minerals extraction.\u00a0Today, there are approximately 375,000 people working in the minerals mining sector and another 97,000 working in coal mining in the U.S., according to Conor Bernstein, a spokesperson for the National Mining Association. Many of those workers are employed in jobs like construction, drilling, trucking, ore processing, and equipment maintenance. If the U.S. is going to ramp up production of critical minerals, this blue collar workforce will likely need to grow, although exactly how much will depend on technology trends and domestic mining policy.<\/p>\n

\u201cHowever you game the estimates \u2026 the number of blue collar workers our industry will need in the coming years is poised to increase,\u201d Bernstein told Grist.<\/p>\n

At the same time, the mining sector will face widespread retirements by the late 2020s, according to a 2014\u00a0report<\/a>\u00a0by the Society for Mining, Metallurgy, and Exploration. \u201cThe challenges identified in that report have now collided with surging mineral demand driven by the energy transition,\u201d Bernstein added.<\/p>\n

Whether the industry will have the same difficulties finding young people to work blue collar mining jobs that it faces recruiting technical experts is unclear. But there are other trends at play that could help critical minerals companies find the workers they need: The U.S. coal industry has been cratering for years, creating an economic void that needs to be filled in coal communities nationwide. Many of the coal miners now facing layoffs or early retirements could be retrained to work in lithium or nickel mining or processing, said Erin Bates, the communications director for\u00a0United Mine Workers of America<\/a>, which represents more coal miners than any other North American union.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of these coal miners have massive skill sets,\u201d Bates said. \u201cThey learn so much in the coal mine, that any other job they move into in that realm \u2026 they will be able to learn.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This article was published by Grist on Jan. 31, 2024. By Maddie Stone Mansur Arief never imagined himself working in mining. As an artificial intelligence researcher finishing a PhD at Carnegie Mellon University, he developed [Read more]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":61933,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"give_campaign_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2502,2442,14,115],"class_list":{"0":"post-61932","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-critical-minerals","9":"tag-education","10":"tag-featured","11":"tag-technology"},"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nmining - Thoughtful Journalism About Energy's Future<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/energi.media\/news\/the-climate-case-for-a-career-in-mining\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"mining - Thoughtful Journalism About Energy's Future\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This article was published by Grist on Jan. 31, 2024. 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