Tailings at IOC's Operations in Labrador City, NL Canada

Air

Clean air is essential for the health of ecosystems and host communities that surround our operations. Emissions such as particulates and gases can impact air quality, so we have a manage them responsibility in line with regulations and stakeholder expectations.

Managing air risks

Our Environment Standards include our position and commitment to responsible air quality management and environmental stewardship. Standards cover requirements for air emissions, including greenhouse gases, from all sources including point sources, and diffuse or fugitive air emissions sources.

Our air risk framework is designed to ensure that the management of air quality, and its associated impacts (light, noise, odour, vibration), are operationally effective and strategically aligned with our environmental commitments and stakeholder expectations. Air quality is also incorporated within the principal environment risk we track. To manage our air impacts across our diverse portfolio, we’ve developed an air risk framework and associated control library to consistently identify, assess, manage and communicate air risk. This risk framework is embedded in our assets’ approach to operational risk management.

The air risk profile includes air quality impacts as well as management of multidisciplinary elements that have a strong link with air emissions. It covers 5 categories:

  • Air emissions (gaseous or solid release of contaminants to the atmosphere) “Are we effectively managing air emission impacts through operational practices?”
  • Airshed (atmospheric basin subject to similar conditions; an area where contaminants can mix and affect air quality) “Do we have more than one air emission releases within the same region, or are there other operations nearby?”
  • Light and Noise (sources that may disrupt ecosystems and/or communities) “Are there areas, communities or species sensitive to light or noise?”
  • Odour (release of odour-causing substance in the atmosphere) “Are we effectively managing odourous gases?”
  • Vibration (oscillatory motion or mechanical waves that propagate through ground, structures or air) “Are we effectively managing vibration through operational practices?”

We use the framework to understand our emissions and potential impacts, control emissions at their source, and implement strategies to deal with adverse conditions. We also collect specific metrics from each asset annually on dust, contaminants, noise, vibration, and light. We undertake modelling to understand the potential operational air and noise emissions at the site boundary, as well as to any identified sensitive receptors. More detailed information can be found in the annual Sustainability Fact Book.

Air risks are managed in line with our company standards, applicable local regulations and guidelines, as well as relevant community commitments. Our controls guide and organise how we manage air emissions, including characterisation, design and planning, integrated management and monitoring. Air quality management is required across almost all operations and has important interfaces with many disciplines including land, energy and climate, communities & social performance, and health, safety and wellbeing.

Strong partnerships with our stakeholders are fundamental to success. How people perceive our environmental impact shapes our social license to operate. We recognise our role in contributing to responsible air management at an airshed level. This is embedded in the way we apply our air risk framework in consideration of both internal and external potential impacts. This is also reflected in our commitment to support effective regulation, and through partnerships and initiatives we support and value.

Controlling our emissions

We apply the mitigation hierarchy across all phases of the mining life cycle to manage air emissions within acceptable criteria. Progress on decarbonisation initiatives, such as the installation of solar power, heat recovery systems, and the use of renewable fuels, has identified opportunities to avoid and reduce air pollutants across our asset portfolio.

We employ direct air pollution controls throughout our operations, depending on their air emissions profile. Mitigation measures may include:

  • Dust collection systems on material transfer points.
  • Wetting of haul roads and stockpiles.
  • Street sweeping and application of dust suppressants.
  • Enclosing or capping material storage piles.
  • Dust fencing.
  • Revegetation.
  • Gas capture and control systems for target pollutants.
  • Operational curtailment in high wind events, or during periods of activity in local communities.

We reduce emission from fixed sources by upgrading equipment with best-available technologies and incorporating control technology evaluations into capital projects. Proper operation and maintenance of assets is critical to minimising emissions, though some inevitably leave our sites. We implement and expand ambient air monitoring networks within and outside our site boundaries. These stations use reference-method quality measurement of local meteorological conditions and pollutants such as dust deposition, fine particles (PM10, PM2.5), nitrogen oxides, sulphur dioxide, halides, hydrocarbons and heavy metals.

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Our performance

Sustainability reporting

Ongoing efforts to enhance our level of understanding of potential emissions impacts has resulted in continued year on year growth across our air monitoring networks. We have started experimenting with low-cost sensors, conducting side-by-side data comparisons with reference-quality monitoring stations to understand their potential. Low-cost sensors may provide an opportunity to accelerate growth of air monitoring networks across our global portfolio.

Air emissions from our operations include:

Sulphur oxides (SOx): emitted mainly at our aluminium and copper smelters, and coal and fuel oil power stations. Sulphur is found naturally in coal and coke which are important feed materials for smelting operations. Our operations are equipped with gas treatment systems that can reduce the SOx emitted to the atmosphere. The efficiency of the treatment systems is frequently assessed by sampling SO2 at the source. Our smelters are also equipped with air quality monitoring networks to collect data on concentration levels in the community.

Nitrogen oxides (NOx): emitted mainly from burning fossil fuels at our mining operations. We control NOx emissions by selecting the best available technologies and equipment when possible. Most of our operations are also tracking NOx concentrations in the environment using an air quality monitoring network.

Fluorides (HF): emitted mainly by our Aluminium smelting operations. Fluorides are a key component of the solvent for alumina (cryolite) and an important additive for bath stability in the process. During electrolysis, fluorides are emitted as gas and particles. Emissions are tracked inside and outside the process buildings to ensure that the emissions are kept under the regulatory thresholds.

Fine particulate matter emissions (PM10 and PM2.5): Dust and fine particles are emitted from mining and processing operations and from burning fossil fuels. Dust from mining comes mostly from fugitive sources including blasting, hauling, material handling and wind erosion on stockpiles and disturbed land areas. We control dust with mitigation measures such as watering, dust suppressants, operational controls, and progressive rehabilitation.

Air emissions data is collected annually from our assets. It is disclosed in the Annual Report and Sustainability Fact Book. We track operational performance against our commitments, however it can be difficult to compare performance between operations.

View our interactive charts for current and historical data relating to our air performance.

View our air performance

Air stories

Respecting rights

Respecting the rights of first nations peoples and their connection to the land where we operate is important to us, and we are committed to growing strong relationships and opening opportunities for continued partnership.
Employees at Richards Bay Minerals
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  • Kennecott has established an observational monitoring site along the Great Salt Lake to understand lake dust and industrial contribution.
  • We have established operational controls to limit pollution generating activities and impacts at select sites and at particular times. For example, blasting restrictions based on wind speed and direction are in place at IOC.
  • We’ve employed innovative meteorological forecasting at some sites to inform our dust mitigation efforts. This promotes awareness of future weather that’s likely to be dust promoting, allowing us to plan or revise our operations accordingly.
Scenic road

Partnership

We hold many important partnerships that are imperative to us managing our emissions appropriately. Often these are local governments, communities and first nations peoples, however we also partner with universities, research organisations and private companies to continue to innovate new solutions to air quality challenges. Some highlights include:
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  • We have a partnership with Elysis and the Quebec government to develop cutting-edge emissions reduction technology for Aluminium smelting in the Saguenay.
  • We partnered with Sinclair at Kennecott to increase their capacity for renewable diesel. This has allowed us to move our entire haul truck fleet (97 trucks) and all supporting heavy equipment to renewable diesel. The switch to renewable diesel reduces PM2.5 (particulate matter less than 2.5 microns) emissions at the tailpipes of our haul truck fleet by 40%, a reduction equivalent to approximately 3.7 billion kilometres of light vehicle travel annually.
  • We have formed a joint venture partnership with Aymium to create Evolys Quebec, which aims to manufacture a renewable metallurgical biocarbon product to reduce emissions in large scale industrial processes. Aymium produces high-value biocarbon and biohydrogen products that can be used to immediately replace fossil fuels in the production of metals, energy, crops, and in the purification of water and air with no modifications to equipment or processes.

Innovation

We are investing in new technologies to improve monitoring and detection methodologies and minimize emissions from our operations. For example:
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  • Air pollution impacts are difficult to understand. They vary over time and space, often dependent on current meteorological conditions. As such, their actual impacts to the local environment are highly variable. In response to this, there has been a lot of innovation in the air emissions quantification space. As industry continues to develop new ways to measure emissions off industrial sources, we seek appropriate opportunities to apply these emerging technologies. For example, we have used forward-looking infrared (FLIR) cameras, paired with Artificial Intelligence (AI) analytics, to identify gaseous leaks from one of our plants. This type of monitoring allows us to “see” leaks when they form, and determine an appropriate and safe response.
  • We have deployed low-cost air quality sensors at a few of our operations around the globe. At some sites, we have been able to co-locate the monitors with reference monitor stations, allowing us to compare the data generated with that from widely-accepted, pollutant-specific analyzers. This testing has proven the use of these sensors in areas where monitoring can otherwise be cost prohibitive, however they are limited by operating temperature and are therefore not suitable for all climates.
  • We trialled LiDAR (Light detection and ranging) for dust plume measurement at some of our assets. This technology gives us useful information on how contaminants are dispersed in the atmosphere after their release in the environment and it helps to inform our emission reduction strategies.
  • We started XRF (X-Ray fluorescence) sampling for continuous measurement of metals next to one of our smelters. This new technology allows us to track metals concentration almost instantaneously instead of waiting for laboratory analysis results. This innovative technology has improved our air quality management and response capabilities.
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Transparency

The expansion of our air quality monitoring network is a step toward improving our emissions data. We currently disclose our air quality data on multiple platforms such as NPRI (Canada), NPI (Australia) and TRI (USA). Some of our sites also disclose air quality data in real time on external platforms accessible to communities.
Read our sustainability report