Andrew Bamber
Managing Director
Bara Consulting
Andrew is a qualified Professional Engineer with over 25 years’ experience in mining and minerals processing in Southern Africa, the Americas, Australia and Asia. His involvement has ranged as an engineer at operations, through delivery of process solutions across a range of commodities including nickel, copper, chrome, gold and platinum. He has extensive experience in process and process equipment design, plant design, cost estimation and project economics as well as construction and operations management. Andrew received a Bachelors degree in Engineering from the University of Cape Town in 1993, a Masters Degree in Mineral Process Engineering in 2005 and a PhD in Mining Engineering from the University of British Columbia in 2008. In 2009 he founded MineSense Technologies, a Vancouver-based mining technology company focused on the delivery of sensor-based grade control and bulk sorting solutions to the industry. Andrew joined join Bara Consulting as Principal, Americas in 2017 and the UK office as MD in 2018, where he focuses on business development, corporate development, and the delivery of techno-economic studies and engineering design for clients globally.
Mine Design for Climate Change
comminution of that rock, and ultimately the reduction of their minerals to metals through either pyro- or hydrometallurgical treatment. By reason of this level of energy intensity, mining - and the primary metals industry in general - is a significant contributor to CO2 emissions, both direct and indirect, and thus to climate change globally. Emissions tracking and reporting is now mandatory in most major mining jurisdictions. Achieving reductions in the energy intensity of mining and metals production is therefore a primary area of focus for most producers, majors, mid-tier and juniors alike.
Ironically, mining is also, by reason of the increasingly scarce and increasingly remote occurrence of economic deposits, is an industry highly vulnerable to climate change, where security of power, water and labour supply, even geotechnical stability in some cases, is at risk due to significant changes to climate in these locations, changes including in precipitation levels (and patterns), wind patterns and storm trends, and to changes in seasonal temperatures (i.e. higher highs and lower lows).
At Bara Consulting we have long had an interest in design for reductions in both the physical as well as environmental footprint of mines. In due diligence we have long been assessing for climate risk in general, where recently that has extended to assessment of risk due to localised climate change trends. Even more recently we have begun to look, in addition to our approaches to footprint reduction, at approaches that can increase the resilience of operations to observed and potential future trends in local climate and weather too. This paper seeks to outline these approaches and describe a systematic design approach not only for climate impact reduction, but climate impact resilience as well.
