Direct and indirect energy

Diversification of sources

The mining activity is energy intensive. For this reason, Anglo American uses different sources of energy in its production. Those deriving from non-renewable sources are diesel oils and fuel, gasoline, natural gas (NG) and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), responsible for more than 90% of total consumption of energy by the company. As to renewable energy sources, they comprise wood chip or biomass of the Catalão e Niquelândia reforestation areas, ethanol and biodiesel.

At the Niquelândia and Barro Alto Mine units and in the construction works of the Barro Alto Project an increase in consumption of non-renewable fuels has been registered, particularly diesel oil, use of which jumped 48% from 2008 to 2009. On the other hand, consumption of ethanol at these plants retracted, from 7.59 m3 in 2008 to 4.37 m3 in 2009.

At Copebrás Catalão/Ouvidor an average increase of 18,000 m3 was registered in wood chip consumption, which is a renewable energy source.

With regard to indirect energy, a small reduction has been observed in electric power consumption, caused by significant retraction registered at Copebrás Cubatão, which affected the subtotal of this item. Despite the general drop in consumption, the Niquelândia, Barro Alto and Catalão/Ouvidor (niobium and phosphate) units consumed more electricity in 2009.

Energy Champions

Since 2008, Anglo American has appointed employees to act as Energy Champions. Among the varied attributions of these champions we point out research and incentive to presentation of ideas for reduction in electric power consumption and greenhouse effect gas (GEE) emissions.

Ideas presented in the Continuous Improvement (CI) system are also used, such as replacement of low-performance electrical engines with high-performance engines, which action has contributed to energy consumption reduction. In all, there are four energy champions: three in operations and one in the corporate area. In 2009, these employees worked the improvement ideas presented so as to turn them into value adding initiatives.

In order to achieve this purpose, they used the Footprint spreadsheet, a tool specially developed for follow-up of operations performance according to the goals agreed upon.