For about 150 years, the use of petroleum products has driven world economies and is the greatest influence on quality-of-life improvement.
Before then, we burned whatever we could find, to keep us warm, to fuel our emerging technologies, and to cook our food. But most of these fuels could not keep up with population growth. Our forests were being pillaged, our health declined due to coal pollution and our oceans stripped of whales.
Our societies turned to the emerging new fuel – oil and its cleaner partner, natural gas. We found its value more than just a fuel – we could make things from it – plastic, clothes, medicines, fertilisers, cosmetics, and the list goes on and on. So, dependent upon these products, it becomes difficult to imagine that we can ever do without them.
But that time has come, just as with wood, coal and whales, the market has outgrown us, demanding cleaner fuels and products which has no effect on the earth and its climate.
This single most disruptive event of the last 150 years is being addressed in all countries to drive our economies toward net-zero carbon emission. To support net-zero targets, the market is moving towards new technologies, such as electric vehicles, renewable technologies, space technology, telecommunication and defence. All of these technologies need critical minerals.
This is space where the mineral resource industry and the energy resource industry collide!
Critical minerals are described by Geoscience Australia as “minerals that are essential to our modern technologies, economies and national security, and whose supply chains are vulnerable to disruption.”
South Australia is well-endowed with many of the minerals and metals projected to be in short supply as this energy transition progresses. SA is rich in copper and currently holds 69% of Australia’s copper resource. It is a major producer of mineral sands, with their associated rare earth elements and is rich in graphite. A state-wide study is currently underway to uncover SA’s full resource potential, putting us at the forefront of the world’s energy transformation.