Source : THE AGE NEWS
According to studies, Australia’s great Pilbara metal ore industry has the ability to redefine itself into a profitable “green metal” export powerhouse in response to concerns that China’s search for higher-quality ore to produce cleaner steel may have contributed to the mining province’s demise.
Fortescue Metals Group, the third-largest iron ore carrier in Western Australia, is a businessman company headed by Andrew Forrest, who last week stated that the change of Chinese steel mill away from traditional storm furnaces to less-polluting technologies was likely to make the iron ore mining hub a “wasteland.”
Forrest stated at a mine conference in Perth that” they’re looking directly into a future that may or may not include WA.”
Iron ore, the raw material used to make steel, is Australia’s biggest export commodity, generating more than$ 100 billion in annual export profits, and China is the biggest importer in the world.
There are concerns that need may decline as China’s iron ore companies struggle to maintain the quality of their supplies because they turn to less-emitting methods that use electric instead of petroleum and demand higher grades of copper ore with fewer impurities.
Rod Sims, a long-serving former head of the American Competition and Consumer Commission, claimed that China’s efforts to clear up its polluting material business posed a threat as well as an enormous opportunity for Australia, which he claimed was” excellently well positioned” to transition to alternative iron manufacturing.
If green copper replaces metal ore as Australia’s largest trade, it may make up to$ 386 billion by 2060.
” Green metal is the next great paragraph in Australia’s trade story,” Sims said. Our fossil fuel exports will unavoidably decline as the earth decarbonizes, but we can do so by producing clean copper using our unmatched renewable energy resources to replace them with high-quality, zero-carbon goods that the globe will require.
In the steel-making process, clean gas, which is produced by using solar energy to convert waters into hydrogen and oxygen, is used to make sure the finished product is emissions-free.
The metal industry is not yet using the technology because it is still much more costly than typical coal-intensive ovens.
Sims, who is currently the head of the Superpower Institute, a think tank founded by power expert and scholar Ross Garnaut, claimed Australia had the copper ore and world-class wind and solar resources to make it work.
The Pilbara had “absolutely blossom” in place of being abandoned as a “wasteland,” Sims continued. The potential is enormous, he said.
In a new report, the Superpower Institute calculates that If green copper replaces metal ore as Australia’s largest trade, it may make up to$ 386 billion by 2060.
Because they could get easily combined with the extensive solar and wind creation required, and had existing system that could be expanded, South Australia’s Eyre Peninsula, Gladstone in Queensland, Kwinana, Geraldton, and the Pilbara in WA are considered appropriate places.
But, Sims said the federal government has act quickly to “level the playing industry.” The report recommends providing tax certificates to simulate the effects of a carbon price, provides that cover up to 30 % of project costs for beginning natural iron, and a boost to vital shared infrastructure like ports, water supplies, pipelines, and power distribution.
The global steel-making sector contributes significantly to global warming, producing at least 8 % of the world’s emissions.
Fortescue is making significant investments in a campaign to diversify into green hydrogen, and it intends to construct a commercial-scale green iron plant in the Pilbara. Meanwhile, BHP and Rio Tinto, the two biggest miners in the world, have partnered with BlueScope Steel to construct an electric iron-making furnace as part of a demonstration project at Kwinana, close to Perth.
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