On 29 October, Dr Foley delivered a speech at the inaugural Mining, Metals and Circular Economy Conference in Sydney. 

I’m very pleased to be here and it’s excellent to see such a strong focus on the circular economy. 

**

I would like to start by acknowledging the Traditional Custodians of the land we are meeting on today, the Gadigal people, and pay my respects to their Elders, past and present. I acknowledge the deep and unbroken connection of Australia’s Indigenous peoples, and their valuable contribution to our knowledge about this land.

**

Australia is seen as an economic miracle.

We have just 0.3% of the world’s population. 

Yet we are the 13th biggest economy and we’re a country that has had pretty much continuous economic growth during the last 30 plus years weathering the global economic downturn of the 2000s and a pandemic. 

Our secret sauce has not just been that we have lots of mineral resources the world wants – many other countries offer that too. Rather, it has been how these have been extracted, how we have discovered them when they are under cover, how we have introduced automation and efficiencies all based on the science and research that has led to new technologies. 

It’s innovation that has made the Australian mining sector globally competitive - its remarkable ability to innovate, improve and evolve. 

However, some of Australia’s success relied on providing fossil fuels to the world. 

Global warming requires this to change. 

***

As we transition to a low emissions world to combat climate change, Australia now has a whole new opportunity because we have the critical minerals that are essential for the low emissions technologies including solar cells, wind turbines and batteries.

We’ve heard from the International Energy Agency, IEA, that to meet demand for electricity storage alone, the world will require well over 100 new mines for nickel, lithium and cobalt, and they anticipate global investment in mining to increase by US$590 billion a new capital is needed by 2040 to produce the minerals needed for the world to achieve net-zero by 2050.

But there are tensions. 

The national conversation to inform the development of the refreshed science and research priorities showed that Australians care deeply about the energy transition and protecting and restoring our environment. 
Delivering the energy transition is a challenge in a setting where we are trying to protect biodiversity and the environment. 

Mining companies know their social licence to open new mines requires demonstration that the mines are necessary to meet those targets and provide essential materials to support humanity. 

It’s good news for the industry but it requires a whole new way of thinking about how to do business. It will require making use of the new and developing technologies. 

Australia also has its own ambitions to add value to these critical minerals by scaling up minerals processing, and contributing to the development of a more complex, deep-tech economy. And adding to this are geopolitical pressures that will make Australia an attractive trade partner.

The international community wants Australia to do more minerals processing as Paris Scope 3 and the Carbon Border Adjustments come into play. More and more, they’re looking to us to provide critical minerals, including rare earth elements that are processed here for the global supply chains that will be essential to the energy transition in countries like the US, UK, Japan, Korea, India and the EU while supporting the ESG requirements.

An example of this is the government support for manufacturing of vanadium flow batteries. This will support taking critical minerals from the ground and all the way to products. 

This means Australia is poised to benefit from the global progress towards decarbonisation and electrification over the next few decades. 

However, the picture is not a simple one. 

Over the top of the energy transition, there is the increasing awareness that resources of the Earth are finite. Many countries are promoting and moving to circular economy practices. These nations are implementing policies that encourage recycling, reuse and remanufacturing. 

For instance, the European Union has set a target of sourcing 15% of its critical minerals from recycled materials by 2030, and China has developed a vast circular industrial system that includes standards for the reuse and refurbishment of critical materials.

Countries are using tax incentives to encourage recycling and banning exports or disposal of materials that could be recycled domestically. 

If these global initiatives succeed, Australia’s role as a primary exporter of raw materials may diminish over time. This transition will have profound implications for our economy. 

**

These really tricky issues are the subject of a report commissioned by the Prime Minister’s National Science and Technology Council for the Ministerial Advisory Group on the Circular Economy last year. I am both the executive officer of the NSTC and a member of this advisory group.

So today, I want to provide some insights.

First, it’s important to understand what is meant by circularity. As you know, it’s not just recycling. Circularity is more than just recovery of materials in products at the end of their life for reprocessing to then be reused. 

A circular economy is an economic and industrial system with 3 core objectives: 
- designing and manufacturing to eliminate waste from the outset
- preserving value through multiple uses and recycling, and 
- conserving natural resources. 

Circularity aims to preserve energy at all stages. Circularity minimises process effort and waste products while maintaining functional identity of a product as long as possible rather than reducing everything down to a raw material.

One of the challenges for Australia to undertake recycling is our absence of mid-stream manufacturing within individual technology value chains like photovoltaics or batteries. Without onshore demand for recycled content in these supply chains, recovered materials must be exported.  

A number of aspects of mining lend themselves to circularity. A significant amount of waste materials can be repurposed for use for the likes of construction materials, rock fertiliser and mine void backfill. Mine tailings are repurposed for cement, ceramics and ore sand. Closed mine sites offer opportunities for energy storage – and some mining companies are already planning for this. There are also opportunities to recover critical and rare earth minerals from tailings. 

All of this is only possible thanks to new mine-tailing beneficiation technology developed recently.  

***

The report discusses how to the make the most of Australia’s participation in the circular economy:

A vital first step is public awareness of the importance of reuse, repair, remanufacture and recycling for devices containing critical minerals. We need to move away from the use once, disposable society and keep materials in use as long as possible.  Circular-economy thinking is about the value in repairing and repurposing before considering elemental recycling.

Second, government procurement can play an important role in driving circularity. Government contracts can create demand by incentivising the purchase of remanufactured products and those containing recycled content. For example, prioritizing ‘best value’ principles that encourage longer product lifecycles or rewarding remanufacturing in public tenders could make a big difference.

Third are the regulatory frameworks, starting with recycling safely – this is of paramount importance and the basis for the high ESG reputation of Australia. 

It’s not easy. In Australia, this will require striking a balance between safety and innovation. For example, battery storage industries transitioning into recycling, face stringent safety regulations that could slow their progress. We must find ways to streamline these processes without compromising environmental and safety standards.

The transition to a circular economy calls for a transformation in how we think about consuming and using renewable energy technologies, such as batteries and solar panels. One model that appeals to me is an  ‘electrons-as-a-service’ model where businesses would retain ownership of these technologies, leasing electricity to consumers while maintaining responsibility for collection and recycling. 

This approach allows businesses to leverage economies of scale for more efficient collection and recycling processes than individual households could achieve. Additionally, when businesses bear the responsibility for recycling, they gain a direct incentive to design products that are easier to recycle, advancing a more sustainable lifecycle for these technologies. 

The logistics of recycling are a challenge for a country like Australia with a large land mass and small population. Using hubs and co-location, integrating transport, services, sharing warehousing, power and water infrastructure will be necessary. We need a systems approach. 

I know the Government is considering the role of critical minerals and common user processing hubs.

***

So, it’s clear mining has a future with circularity. But it’s not a simple picture.

Two of the real challenges are the uncertainty around timing and the differences between different minerals. This complicates planning. Business models can develop supply and demand scenarios, taking account of technological change, product lifespan and recycling – but they can’t predict market reactions, metal prices and unknown new trends or technologies. 

The CSIRO has made a related point about market uncertainty. In its “Known Unknowns” report from 2021, the CSIRO modelled the global need for cobalt, lithium and nickel under different scenarios for EVs. 

This suggested that growth of cobalt is short term followed by a long period of decline and ultimately a glut. They found that nickel has a longer demand window; and lithium has a long and bright future for EVs. 

I emphasise this is not a forecast as things changed in 2024, but it is a demonstration of the uncertainty and the need to consider different influences on critical mineral requirements.

***

As we consider the future for critical minerals, it’s important to realise that the circular economy opportunity is both real and nuanced. The feasibility of recycling critical minerals is highly dependent on the element and the form that in which it is used. 

There are two ways: Lithium, cobalt, tungsten, titanium and rare earths are incorporated into products as lumps of materials such as batteries and magnets. Recycling of lithium and cobalt from batteries could reach more than 90% simply due to the high percentage by mass of these elements and the business case for recovering valuable materials in bulk, compared to the small amount of energy required and waste produced. 

However, some materials such as gallium, indium and germanium are used in tiny quantities and incorporated into other materials as a matrix to produce the desired effect. For example, critical minerals used to dope semiconductors are at the parts per million level. The recycling of these metals used at trace levels is hard to achieve. The business case for recovering scant quantities through chemical processing, requires lots of energy and produces lots of waste. This makes it difficult to justify recycling - unless the metal is as valuable as platinum or gold. 

So critical minerals that are used in very small quantities are very difficult to recycle and so not ripe for circularity.
I have to say that this too may change. For example, SunDrive, an Australian PV manufacturer is designing their solar panels with recycling at their end of life in mind.

***

So I reiterate, the picture is multi-layered. 

At first blush, a global circular economy in critical minerals could be seen to threaten Australia’s position as an exporter of ores, concentrates and refined chemicals in some cases. Eventually, primary extraction will cease to be a significant driver of some critical minerals production. However, that’s a long way off. Primary extraction still has a long trajectory.

Circularity is imperfect. There is a prohibitive economic and energy impost to recycle where quantities of a particular element are vanishingly small. And inevitably, there are technology shifts creating new demands and, hence, the need for new materials. 

Modelling of battery materials shows that circularity only comes into play when a ‘saturation point’ or a change in technology is reached. This is when end-of-life volumes are high enough to substantially feed production demand. 
When this will occur is guesswork, but although imperfect, modelling gives us some idea of when. Mostly likely in the 2050s.

**

All of the things I’ve talked about today – the challenges, the changing patterns of demand that are likely over the coming two decades, and the differences in circularity opportunities for different minerals adds up to a tricky optimisation problem for the mining sector.

As I said at the start, Australia’s mining sector is known for innovation. But now it’s time to double down on that reputation and do everything we can to ensure innovation drives the coming two decades - whether that’s  innovation in business models, extraction techniques, processing and circular economy technologies. 

There is a long runway to prepare. And I know you’re already thinking deeply about this.

I recently met with the Chief Scientist of a mining multinational who said that the energy transition has actually been helpful for them as a business because it has forced them to innovate. His company has doubled its investment in R&D and started working with universities on that early-stage ideas generation, taking a particular problem to research teams and saying, ‘can you solve this for us?’  

This should serve as a call to action for Australian innovation. BAU will not help us reach circularity and deliver on the energy transition. We must embrace challenge-focused innovation, where industry, academia, and government work hand-in-hand to solve real-world problems. Whether it’s improving the circularity of critical minerals or finding new ways to extract value sustainably, we need to encourage collaborative research that delivers solutions. This is how we can not only maintain our competitive edge but also lead the way in sustainable innovation for the future.

For the mining sector, it’s about knowing where the opportunities are going to lie, where there will be growth, and building our business models around this.  

Governments also recognise their role in supporting industries to grow and transition – and government signals will be important to the future circularity in mining.

The Government now has a range of programs to support innovation and business development from idea all the way to product or service. This is the first time we have had this end-to-end support. And critical technologies including critical minerals and response to the energy transition are priority areas in all these programs. 

***

So to recap - Australia's mining sector has an unprecedented opportunity to lead the world in the transition to a circular economy. By embracing circularity, we can reduce waste, generate new economic opportunities, and contribute to a more sustainable future.

To achieve this, science and technology is our friend. It will depend on Australia developing the right capabilities in minerals processing and innovative technology. And it requires a shift in our attitude to the value of our minerals.

We must also be responsive to what will continue to be a changing landscape. 

If we can stay the course and get this right, we will avoid another Kodak moment and our children can look forward to inheriting:
   
•    an economy that leverages our mining and minerals wealth
•    an economy built around our role as a clean energy superpower 
•    an economy where countries look to Australia as a trusted partner because of our consideration of the environment, social responsibility, and circular economy  
•    and an economy that makes the most of our strengths in fundamental science and research. 

If we do this, Australia is in line for its second economic miracle. As those of you with a Catholic school upbringing will know, two miracles are a pretty consequential threshold.

Thank you very much.  
#