Stan Pillay, the Group’s manager for climate change and energy, is the man behind Anglo American’s ECO2MAN programme – the first phase of Anglo American’s energy and carbon dioxide management strategy.
In September 2013, Stan (who is also chairman of the National Business Initiative’s Energy Efficiency Leadership Network) was excited to see Anglo American again commended by Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), which represents a significant portion of the investor community. Anglo American is the only mining company to be included in the CDP Global 500 Climate Performance Leadership Index. This acknowledgment speaks to the heart of what Stan and his team do across the Anglo American Group.
What drives Anglo American’s approach to environmental sustainability?
Certainly the licence to operate and compliance are prerequisite, but what I’m finding is that sustainability brings in efficiencies that allow you, over the long term, to obtain more value. It’s got to do with longer-term competitiveness.
And investors are looking for sustainable companies?
It’s about companies that are adaptive, that can innovate quickly and can leverage relationships with stakeholders and communities. Mining is unlike a plant or factory, where one manages efficiencies in a relatively ‘stable’ environment. In mining, you tend to advance out of the ‘purple patch’. So to produce the same ton, you need to use more energy and emit more carbon than the year before. Cumulatively you have a growing impact, so you can’t stand still.
So you have to be ahead of the game?
To be competitive, you need to show how you can be smarter than anyone else.
Can you explain Anglo American’s energy and carbon strategy?
There are three aspects to Anglo American’s sustainability strategy. They are:
• Operational excellence – The things we do within our business that improve our environmental performance. With regard to energy in particular, it’s about improving productivity.
• Exploiting technologies – Implementing technologies so we can do what we do with less impact on the environment and at a lower cost. An example of this is the collaboration between Anglo American Platinum and an independent power producer to recover its waste heat energy and produce 4MW of electricity at the Platinum processing facility in Rustenburg.
• Engagements and partnerships – How we move beyond the system of the organisation and how we interface with society. Our work at the National Business Initiative’s Energy Efficiency.
Leadership Network is intended to improve energy efficiency management across business and government, thereby contributing to shared objectives of lowering energy intensity and establishing successful network partnerships.
Tell us about ECO2MAN.
It stands for energy and CO2 management and it’s a programme I introduced to the Group in 2010. It’s the way we manage energy and carbon across the business. This takes into account some of the external drivers, like costs, and it helps us to understand how energy is being used and how it can have a positive impact.
So it’s about data collection?
Yes, because you need to understand energy consumption and the emissions footprint. It is costly to install meters at process and equipment level and it takes time to get it working. But that’s part of what ECO2MAN is about understanding the correlation with major operational processes and acting on good-quality data.
Have you been able to institute savings as a result?
Yes. Once you have the data and you’ve analysed it, it then comes down to identifying opportunities to save. In some instances, it is as simple as shifting power demand to off-peak periods and benefiting from lower tariff rates. In total we have a listing of over 600 energy saving projects, which provides impetus for sharing of good practice across the Group.
Any one initiative you wish to mention?
Our Group Technology Development team is looking into energy recovery in gravity-fed slurry pipelines. The technology has the potential to benefit a number of our business units.