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Air

Clean air is essential for the health of ecosystems and the communities that surround our operations. Emissions such as particulates and gases can affect air quality, and we aim to manage them responsibly, in accordance with regulations and stakeholder considerations.  

Managing air risks

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

Air quality is incorporated within the principal environment risk to align with our environment commitments. We have developed a framework that builds on our Environment Standard and provides a consistent approach to identify, assess, manage and communicate air-related risk across our portfolio.  

The risk framework informs our assets’ approach to operational risk management.  

Our air risk classification includes air quality impacts as well as management of multidisciplinary elements that have a strong link with air emissions. It covers 6 elements within 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 release 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 support how we 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. Visit the Sustainability Fact Book for more detailed information.   

We manage air risks in line with our company standard, 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. We manage air quality across our operations and recognise its importance to other disciplines including land, energy and climate, communities & social performance, and health, safety and wellbeing.  

We recognise our role in contributing to responsible air management at an airshed level. This is considered in the way we apply our air risk framework for both internal and external potential impacts. This is also reflected in our commitment to support effective regulation, and through our partnerships.  

Controlling our emissions

We seek to apply the mitigation hierarchy to manage air emissions within acceptable criteria. Through progress on decarbonisation initiatives, such as the installation of solar power, heat recovery systems, and the use of renewable fuels, we have 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 
  • 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.

We identify opportunities to reduce emissions from fixed sources through equipment upgrades and incorporating control technology evaluations into capital projects. Operation and maintenance practices help to reduce emissions and many of our sites have ambient air monitoring networks within and outside our site boundaries. These stations measure local meteorological conditions and emissions such as dust deposition, fine particles (PM10, PM2.5), nitrogen oxides, sulphur dioxide, halides, hydrocarbons and heavy metals. 

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Our performance

Ongoing efforts to enhance our level of understanding of potential emissions impacts has resulted in expanded 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.

Some emissions can be hazardous and require careful monitoring and management. The potentially hazardous emissions we monitor at operations are sulphur oxides (SOx) from fuels and processing material, nitrogen oxides (NOx) from fossil fuels, gaseous fluoride emissions from aluminium smelters, and respirable particulate emissions (PM10 and PM2.5) from fugitive dust associated with mining operations and fossil fuels. Wherever possible, we implement control technologies for our emissions. 

We disclose air emissions data in our Annual Report and Sustainability Fact Book.

View our air performance

Respecting rights

We seek to reduce our impacts to air quality in the regions where we operate. Our aim is to eliminate or reduce emissions at the source through technology and engineering solutions, and we often also monitor air quality at identified communities or ecosystems to track progress against our emissions objectives.
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Some ways we are doing this include:

  • Our Kennecott operation in Utah, US, 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 selected sites and particular times. For example, our Iron Ore Company of Canada operation implements blasting restrictions based on wind speed and direction.  
  • 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. 

 

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Partnership

We hold many important partnerships that are imperative to us managing our emissions appropriately. Often these are local governments, communities and Indigenous and land-connected Peoples, and we also partner with universities, research organisations and private companies to continue to innovate new solutions to air quality challenges.
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Some highlights include:

  • We have a partnership with and the Quebec government to develop cutting-edge emissions reduction technology for aluminium smelting in the Saguenay region of Canada. 
  • We partnered with Sinclair at Kennecott in Utah, US 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 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 minimise emissions from our operations.
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Examples:
  • Air quality impacts can be complex to assess. They change over time and location, often influenced by weather and other environmental conditions. As a result, understanding their effects on the local environment requires careful monitoring and analysis. In response, significant advances have been made in air emissions measurement and modelling to improve accuracy and transparency. For example, we have used forward-looking infrared (FLIR) cameras and artificial intelligence analytics to help identify possible 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 several 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 analysers. 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, so are 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 so we can continuously measure 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

Sustainability reporting

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.  
View our Sustainability Fact Book