Technology Metals for a Green Future: The Role of Biomining

Current global efforts to achieve net-zero carbon emissions is leading to increased mining of ‘Technology Metals’. These are the metals needed for ‘green’ technologies such as battery-powered electric vehicles, solar photovoltaics and wind power generation. Examples include cobalt, lithium, rare earth elements, tin, copper and tungsten. Although their current annual global production is not large (~100-100000 T) demand is increasing significantly. 

This rapid increase in demand is in turn driving a need for sustainable mining practices to exploit them profitably while protecting ecosystems and human rights and health. Biomining is such a practice, and is well-established for extraction of metals such as copper. At MEI's Biomining '23 in Falmouth in June, Prof. Karen Hudson-Edwards will review biomining of copper and other technology metals, highlighting research in the NEMO (Near-zero-waste recycling of low-grade sulfidic mining waste for critical-metals, mineral and construction raw-material production in a circular economy) and Met4Tech (Interdisciplinary circular economy centre for technology metals) projects.

Karen is Professor in Sustainable Mining at the Camborne School of Mines and Environment and Sustainability Institute at the University of Exeter, UK.  She is an environmental geochemist and mineralogist working in the fields of mine waste characterisation and remediation, sustainable resource extraction (including biomining), mining and circular economy. She has published over 125 peer-reviewed papers in these areas  with colleagues in microbiology, geomorphology, engineering, business and social science. 

She was the 2012/3 Mineralogical Society of Great Britain and Ireland’s Hallimond Lecturer, the 2016 Australian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy New Zealand's Visiting Lecturer and the 2019 European Association of Geochemistry’s Distinguished Lecturer.  Karen was recently named among the top 100 most inspiring women in mining, being chosen for inclusion in the 2022 ‘100 Global Inspirational Women in Mining’ publication. This book, published biennially, highlights the wealth of female talent within the global mining industry and celebrates 100 women from around the world who go “above and beyond” and contribute so much to the industry and, as a result, are role models for everyone. 

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