Environmental optimisation of mine scheduling through life cycle assessment integration

Life cycle assessments (LCA) are useful to quantify the environmental costs of mining projects, however the application of LCA is often a retrospective environmental measurement of operating mines. This paper presents a novel methodology of carrying out a LCA to generate life cycle impact assessment data that can form an environmental block model of a deposit. These spatially explicit data can then be used as a constraint within long-term mine scheduling simulations. The results indicate that significant reductions in global warming impact can be achieved at a small economic cost. For example using an environmental constraint it was possible to achieve 91.9% of the global warming impact whilst achieving 95.9% of the net present value compared to the baseline. Different constraints and economic scenarios are explored and multi-criteria decision analysis is carried out. This approach enables environmental considerations to be included in strategic mine planning. This is important because mining will continue to form an important part of our society for the foreseeable future. Integrating environmental considerations into the earliest stages of mine planning can assist in driving environmentally responsible raw material extraction.