Climate change and minerals

Minerals, particularly for construction, are essential as the UK mitigates and adapts to climate change, and are essential for enhancing flood and coastal defences, and delivering low/zero carbon energy plant, housing and other buildings.

But a prior issue is the carbon footprint of mineral supply. Knowing this allows carbon labelling of minerals going into construction, energy generation and manufacturing.

Some mineral processing is energy intensive. Cement, brick, gypsum, china clay and potash manufacturing is already subject to EU and UK carbon trading schemes. 

As yet there is no sector-wide data on what carbon is emitted upstream in mines and quarries and in transporting raw mineral. To plug the gap the UK Minerals Forum established a Working Group to investigate, as one of the workstreams leading to its third Living with Minerals conference in November 2008.

It looked at the carbon emitted in winning mineral and moving it to users. It also assessed asphalt and ready-mix concrete production, often closely integrated with aggregate extraction, and the emissions from moving imported coal within the UK. It was not possible to measure emissions from the smaller import streams, from onshore oil and gas, or from non-UK transport emissions - significant in the case of imported coal.

With limited resources, the Working Group used existing data for mineral production and transport emissions. To estimate the total material moved on mineral sites and the resulting emissions a standard 4kg/CO2 per tonne was mostly used, based on aggregates. For tonnage moved, ratios of product to non-product excavated were agreed for each type of mineral and judgments made about haulage distances.

This approach has limitations and improved assessments are needed. Emissions from marine aggregate dredging should be added, and total material moved on sites measured more accurately. Subject to these constraints, the Working Group’s final report (pdf, 575 kb), published in autumn 2009, available on the UK Minerals Forum website, says that the UK mineral industries emitted about 4 million tonnes of CO2 in 2007, including almost 1.29mt (just over 32%) in transport.

This is not huge relative to other UK sectors. It’s under 0.5% of Defra’s total estimate of 550mt for 2006, with 230mt emitted by energy provision and 130mt by transport. Landfill and livestock digestion emissions easily exceeded it, both with about 19mt CO2 equivalents. But for the mineral extractors it requires an agenda for action.

Increasing fuel and power costs already press down on energy use. Extending carbon trading through Carbon Reduction Commitments should have some impact – though the trigger of bulk electricity use measured at highest corporate level may not catch many operators. The Working Group also found much existing good practice to tackle emissions on sites and in transport. Work by the Carbon Trust, funded by the Aggregates Levy, is now helping operators apply this, with potential to do more.

For mineral planners a major issue in responding to climate change will be site locations and transport distances. Aggregates potentially offer more supply choices than specialist minerals. An estimated 615,000 tonnes of CO2 (about 15% of 4mt) was emitted by aggregate road haulage. This could this be reduced, or increases avoided, by carefully locating extraction relative to markets or site working could be sequenced to reduce the volume of material moved. These should now be issues for minerals environmental assessments.

Climate change and waste

The global consumption of resources is increasing rapidly, which is having environmental and economic impacts; for example, water supplies are being depleted and resource prices are climbing. Climate change will exacerbate these problems.

As set out in Planning Policy Statement 10: Planning for Sustainable Waste Management, the Government’s objective is to “protect human health and the environment by producing less waste” and by creating a step-change that sees waste as a resource instead of something to be thrown away. In order to “break the link between economic growth and the environmental impact of waste”, its management must become more sustainable, much greater use must be made of the waste hierarchy (reduce-reuse-recycle) and it should be used as a source of energy – these will all require investment in new waste management facilities or treatments. PPS10 says that “The planning system is pivotal to the adequate and timely provision of the new facilities that will be needed.” Therefore, these national policies must filter down to the Regional Spatial Strategies and the county/municipal level Minerals and Waste Development Frameworks (MWDF).

Methane is one of the most harmful greenhouse gases with potential for affecting climate change. In the context of MWDFs, it is mainly associated with landfill gas emissions. With increasing amounts of bio-degradeable wastes being diverted away from landfill, less methane will be produced. It is difficult to see that much more could be done to reduce methane emissions from landfills as all operating and most closed non-inert landfill sites are now required to have landfill gas collection and management systems. The gas is either used to power electricity generators or flared off. Any proposed sites should be required to have such systems.

The main priority in respect of climate change for many MWDFs is to minimise other types of carbon gas emissions. Carbon gases are given off by many natural and artificial processes. Some waste management processes inevitably produce carbon dioxide; for example, 20% of the loss of weight through composting is carbon dioxide. The relative merits of different processes and technologies, with regard to greenhouse gases, is not clear cut; evaluating them can raise very complex, and sometimes imponderable, questions so plans should concentrate on enabling facilities to be developed rather than to propose the technologies of those facilities.

Furthermore, a plan's efforts to minimise impacts on climate change, and to monitor such impacts, will often focus on emissions from the traffic that would be generated by waste developments. Work relating to "waste miles" can be undertaken, linked to the MWDFs Sustainability Appraisal.

CLIMATE CHANGE CHAMPIONS

The Networks Climate Change Champions for Minerals and Waste are Lester Hicks and Sue Brett.

Lester Hicks is the retired former Head of Minerals and Waste Planning division in CLG and its predecessors in 1997-2007. 

Sue Brett is currently Senior Nuclear Issues Officer at Cumbria Council. Dealing with all aspects of radioactive waste, she has contributed to the MWDF Core Strategy and Generic Development Control Policies, contributed to the securing of a section106 agreement to provide community benefits to the village that hosts the national Low Level Waste Repository and liaised/commented on radioactive waste planning applications.

For 18 months she has been on loan to the Minerals & Waste Policy team. Having successfully seen the Core Strategy and Generic Development Control Policies through examination in public to adoption, Cumbria are now working on Site Allocations Policies.

Last year Sue completed a part-time MSc in Environmental Planning at Liverpool John Moores University. She is a Licentiate Member of RTPI, and sit on the NW regional Activities Committee, as well as the on the Network's Minerals & Waste Interest Group

Other links

• RTPI Climate Change Compendium
• RTPI climate change research papers
• Networks and climate change

Events

• Forthcoming RTPI events relating to climate change

Return to the Network's Planning to live with climate change page
Return to the Network's homepage
Go back to the Minerals and Waste homepage

Author:

Catherine Middleton

Publisher:

The Royal Town Planning Institute

Date:

05-Apr-11

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