Mining big BHP has smitten a deal to amass electricity from wind farms and an enormous battery that it says can offer enough day-and-night power to satisfy half the requirements of its mammoth Olympic Dam operations in South Australia.
in an exceedingly “first-of-its-kind” contract, French renewable developer Neoen will supply 24/7 energy, called “baseload” energy, to BHP from July 2025.
The 70-megawatt power purchase agreement declared on Thursday is the latest sign of corporations across emissions-intensive industries responding to enhancive pressure from governments, shareholders, and wider society to require additional aggressive steps to decarbonize their operations.
BHP’s sprawling Olympic Dam mining operations in Australian state are a vital supply of copper, stuff which will be needed in more and more Brobdingnagian quantities to make clean energy infrastructure and electric vehicles.
Jennifer Purdie, the company’s Olympic Dam quality president, the same BHP was targeted at manufacturing that copper more sustainably.
“This agreement will support BHP on its decarbonization journey, and supply new firmed renewable energy and exaggerated stability to the South Australian grid,” she said.
Under the agreement, Neoen will provide half the output from the 412-megawatt initial stage of the Goyder wind farm, currently under construction, and can be secured by its Blyth huge battery project during times once the wind isn’t blowing.
it's expected to produce half of Olympic Dam’s expected electricity wants from the 2026 twelve-month supported current demand forecasts.
Neoen same the Olympic Dam deal marked its first-ever supply of around-the-clock, or “baseload”, renewable energy, and would be used as a “template for future contracts”.
“We are delighted to produce BHP with this extremely innovative solution,” Neoen Australia director gladiator de Sambucy said. “We are convinced that our ability to mix our assets and our energy management capabilities to form custom-made industrial offers is a key component of success for our future developments.”
whereas fossil fuels still account for much of Australia’s power supply, the flow of wind and star generation has been fast as governments and firms push ahead with efforts to arrest temperature change and also the price of renewable energy falls.
Neoen has engineered 2 of the biggest batteries within the country: the Victoria huge Battery close to Geelong, and South Australia’s Hornsdale Power Reserve, called the “Tesla huge Battery”.
BHP chief industrial officer Vandita Pant's same renewable energy partnerships were seen as vital steps in achieving the company’s target of a thirty percent cut in operational emissions by 2030, and its longer-term goal of getting “net-zero” emissions by 2050.
