Miners get Ready for Cap-and-Trade
The release by the Obama administration of the draft American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (ACESA) should have all Canadian mining companies examining their carbon footprint. Under the current Obama plan, the US federal government will set caps on C02 emissions for many industrial sectors. Companies that clean up and live below their quotas will generate carbon credits, which can then be banked, sold or traded to other businesses who exceed their carbon caps. Obama's goal is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 83 percent of 2005 levels by 2050 and in so doing, is expects to generate $645 billion in revenue between 2012 and 2019. In the next round of international climate talks scheduled for December in Copenhagen, Canadian mining companies (and other companies in carbon intense sectors) should expect that the U.S. will begin insisting that other countries meet the U.S.'s C02 emission standard.
The first step in addressing emissions is for businesses to tally up how much C02 they are currently emitting, which is no easy task especially when this must include the cost of bringing materials to and from a project site. Forward looking Canadian mining companies have sensed changes to the regulatory landscape and several of these companies, Barrick Gold, Goldcorp and Newmont Mining, have recently been highlighted in a report published by the Carbon Disclosure Project (a non-profit organization based in the UK, which acts as an intermediary between shareholders and 3,000 of the largest corporations in the world, whose goal is to encourage private and public organizations to measure, manage and reduce emissions and climate change impacts) their carbon emission disclosure policies.
Among the index of Global 500 companies, Newmont Mining was the sole Canadian mining company recognized, while among S&P 500 issuers, Barrick Gold and Goldcorp were the sole Canadian representatives.
For these companies, the keys to their carbon strategies were greater energy efficiency and using renewable energy, which resulted in cost savings. These savings will ensure that regardless of how cap-and-trade regulations evolve, these companies will benefit from their carbon reductions. Another important consideration is that as dwindling resources push companies into ever more marginal areas, government and community relationships will become essential to success, and companies that can establish themselves as stewards of the environment will have more social and economic capital to work with when trying to develop projects in these areas.
