Panel discusses mining and green energy

Havre native Suzanne Tilleman, dean of the University of Montana College of Business, moderated a roundtable discussion at UM's Bureau of Business and Economic Research 2024 Economic Outlook Seminar Wednesday, where participants talked about the place of the mining industry in the ongoing transition to green energy in Montana.

Sibanye-Stillwater Mining Company VP of Legal and Government Affairs Heather McDowell said her company is a large energy customer in the state that produces palladium and platinum, which are among the materials that will be needed for the transition.

McDowell said the transition will take a great deal to make happen and will require the kinds of minerals that her company produces.

In the meantime, she said, they need to rely on power from traditional sources in order to mine that material and they need a stable energy and commodities market if they are going to be able to compete with other countries that produce similar minerals with less care toward their effects on the climate and the treatment and pay of workers.

She said she wants as much of the material the U.S. needs for the transitions be produced in America under workforces like theirs, that are treated and paid well with a union to protect them, and regulations to prevent operations from contributing too much to climate change.

"It's our responsibility," she said.

However, she said, the U.S. only produces 6 of the 50 critical minerals for the transition, and other nations with lower standards, often adversarial ones, are sometimes difficult to compete with given the prices those lax standards allow them to ask for.

McDowell said they have a great relationship with their regulators and with the entities they have their Good Neighbor Agreement with.

The agreement is a more-than 20-year-old legal contract between the company and organizations like the Northern Plains Resource Council and other local community organizations that protect natural landscapes while allowing responsible mineral development.

McDowell said despite the disagreements they often have with such entities, they have a robust mediation system which can find common ground without negotiation meant to solve problems without being derailed by "greenhouse gas ideology."

As in favor of the free market as she is, McDowell said, the government is going to have to do some things to help them be more competitive in global market while maintaining their high standards.

As for the power they use for mining, she said, the company's investors care about using as much green energy as they can, but they run a 24-hour operation that cannot afford to ever lose power, so they need sources of power more consistent than some of the newer greener sources can provide.

She also said the energy market in general is volatile, and the power they've had to buy has been going up in price, so their operation is getting more and more difficult to keep sustainable despite how needed it is for the energy transition.

The other participant in the discussion was Montana Department of Environmental Quality Air, Energy and Mining Division Administrator Sonja Nowakowski, who talked about a number of issues including legal challenges her organization faces when approving permits for things like mining operations.

Nowakoski said the constant stream of lawsuits is the biggest challenge for facilitating clean mining operations in the state that will help the energy transition, with groups targeting their Montana Environmental Policy Act reviews and weaponizing the law to challenge their approvals.

She said electric vehicles and wind turbines can need hundreds or thousands of pounds of copper alone to be made, so mining of minerals is going to be vital to both the production and use of power created by green energy sources, as well as the transmission lines that will be needed.

She said they are in the process of working on their MEPA review process to find ways to make it less vulnerable to legal challenges, which she hopes the Montana Legislature will help them with.

She said the state has robust regulations for mining, informed by many decades of the industry operating in the state, and, unfortunately, not always responsibly.

Nowakowski said the industry has made a lot of mistakes in the past but the state and industry have both learned from those mistakes and made their system better.

Thankfully, she said, the federal government is in the process of infusing a tremendous amount of money into the state, from $71 million in home energy rebates to $35 million in power grid resilience and $43 million for electric vehicle infrastructure.

"It's an exciting time," she said.