Critical minerals, collaboration and training: The role of universities in mining’s global future

World Mining Congress 2023

Brisbane Exhibition and Convention Centre

27 June 2023

Delivered by Professor Deborah Terry

Distinguished guests, delegates to the World Mining Congress, one and all.

I’d like to begin by acknowledging the Traditional Owners of the lands on which we meet today. We honour their Elders and their continuing cultural and spiritual connection to this land – as we walk together on the path to Reconciliation.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak here today.

This is the first time in its 65-year history that the World Mining Congress has been held in Australia.

And I’d like to acknowledge the good judgment and foresight of the event organisers in choosing to hold the Congress here in one of Australia’s mineral-rich states, at a time when the world’s mining industry is on the cusp of major change.

As the global community plots a path to net zero carbon emissions by 2050, we know it will transform our state, Queensland.   

In fact, last year the Queensland government released its Energy and Jobs Plan that outlines the path to “an affordable, cleaner energy future”, a plan that is supported by the Critical Minerals Strategy announced by the Premier this morning.

And, in line with these ambitions, the government has made a firm commitment that by the time Brisbane hosts the 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games, 70 per cent of the state’s electricity will be generated from renewable energy sources.

Given that Queensland has vast resources of coal and gas, as well as many of the critical minerals needed to power a low-carbon economy, there are few places in the world that face the same scale of challenges and opportunities in achieving these goals.

My central message to everyone here today is that universities – whether here in Queensland, or around the world – have the capacity and the capabilities to be the essential partner of the resources sector as you work to play your role in this complex economic, social, and environmental transition.

After all, our universities are much more than just places of learning.

They are also centres for ideas, knowledge creation, research and innovation – for the benefit of industry, and society more broadly.

Universities are, undoubtedly, among the most resilient, self-renewing institutions in human history.

Our universities have stood the test of time precisely because they are dynamic and adaptive institutions with an enduring, never-ending mission: To create and share knowledge in service to society – in a way that improves the future for those who follow us.

Or, as the former US Ambassador to Australia, Jeffrey Bleich, so eloquently put it, universities help us to: “see the future and prepare future generations to succeed in it”.

Universities across the world fulfil that role – and they do it every day, in countless ways.

But I want to start today by outlining a potential set of scenarios for the future as we look to understand what we need to do, collectively, to chart a course to a net zero future.

And, rather conveniently, it’s an example that involves my own university – The University of Queensland, or UQ.

Two months ago, here in Brisbane, I was at the launch of the findings of the Net Zero Australia Study, a collaboration between our team at UQ, the University of Melbourne, Princeton University, and the Nous Group.

This collaboration has produced a comprehensive roadmap that outlines, in detail, the changes that will be needed, here in Australia, to realise our national goal of achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2050.

The multi-disciplinary team that worked on this project consisted of academics with expertise across mining, energy, agriculture, atmospheric science, economics, politics, and nearly all of the fields of engineering.

Given the complexity of the transition to net zero, the project team needed this broad range of academic, industry and government expertise to fully grasp the challenge – and to develop models of what the coming energy transition could look like, here, in Australia.

The scenarios envisage solar and wind farms stretching across Australia’s sunbelt, powering an economy based on renewable electricity and potentially creating hundreds of thousands of jobs. 

At the same time, the majority of the scenarios anticipate a strategic gas reserve in support of renewables and storage, a reserve that would be used sparingly in the near term, and rarely in the long term.

But all of the scenarios have one thing in common.

Regardless of which path we take to net zero, every scenario involves a massive expansion of mining.

Because as the world transitions to a low-carbon future, the mining of critical minerals will have to increase exponentially to underpin the growth that will be required in renewable energy technologies.

Those critical minerals – including lithium, cobalt, and vanadium – as well as energy transition resources such as nickel and copper, are now needed urgently around the world to underpin a new energy grid, energy-efficient technology, and energy storage.

This is a point that I’m sure is very familiar to all of you.

And it’s a point that is well understood by the mining sector, globally.

It’s also accepted and understood by the Australian Government, which only last week released its Critical Minerals Strategy outlining the framework for growing Australia’s critical minerals sector through to 2030.

The stated objectives of that strategy include creating robust supply chains through strong international partnerships; enhancing our sovereign capability; keeping more of the value chain of our resources in Australia; and expanding the mining of critical minerals to position Australia as a renewable energy superpower.

In a similar vein, one of Net Zero Australia’s plans is based on building a new clean export industry that involves the ‘onshoring’ of our minerals processing in order to derive economic benefit using clean energy.

However, despite these clear and detailed scenarios, the path to achieving the required energy transitions will not be easy or straightforward.

So, today, I want to use this platform to articulate the two ways that the university sector can support the mining sector, globally, to tackle the far-reaching change that is required to transition to a net zero future.

I’ll quickly outline these two areas now, before going into a more detailed explanation of our many opportunities for collaboration.

The first of these areas is perhaps the most obvious one.

It involves partnering with universities to recruit, develop, and train a skilled workforce that’s motivated to work in mining because it understands that the sector is playing a key role in our path to a carbon-neutral future.

As I’ll explain shortly, this challenge of attracting a skilled workforce needs to be addressed urgently, or it risks being a constraint on the growth of the resources sector in the decades ahead.

The second area I want to discuss is the enormous potential for universities and the sector to partner on mining research and innovation, and in this regard, the independent advice and input of university experts will be particularly important in gaining community support – and the social license that the sector needs to expand critical minerals mining.

So, to return to the first of those areas of collaboration, I want to make a point that should be self-evident – but that can be all-too-easily overlooked.

One of the most important things universities have always done is to educate young adults, so they’re equipped with the knowledge and skills to make a meaningful contribution to society.

In nations all over the world, universities produce the skilled graduates that are essential for economic growth and diversification.

So, for instance, at UQ, we’ve been training a skilled workforce for the mining sector for over a century now – and the nature of that training has evolved consistently over that period to meet the sector’s ever-changing needs.

As someone who has spent their whole career working in higher education, I’ve always had a keen interest in the employability of our students, as well as the future prospects of the major industries that employ our graduates.

As a result, when I reviewed the Net Zero Australia modelling, there was one statistic that really stood out.

That study estimates that the national workforce required to support the energy sector, alone, will expand from 100,000 people today, to roughly 800,000 workers by the year 2060.

For context, that’s roughly equivalent to the number of registered health professionals who are currently working in Australia’s large and complex health sector.

Most of the people who will be employed by the energy sector in the future will need technical skills that they simply won’t learn at high school.

They’ll need to be highly trained.

So, it begs the question: When the transitioning energy sector starts employing all of those engineers, scientists, designers, and data analysts, where will the mining sector get its skilled workforce?

Higher education institutions can and will increase their capacity to train them, but where will the students come from?

And, on top of that challenge, the mining sector is somewhat hampered in this “war for talent” due to some deeply rooted reputational perceptions.

On the screen are the results of a recent survey undertaken by the Mining Industry Human Resources Council and reported by McKinsey.

It found that 70 per cent of 15- to 30-year-olds said that they “definitely” wouldn’t, or “probably” wouldn’t, work in mining.

It’s a result that contains a confronting and concerning truth for the resources sector.

Mining is at the bottom of preferred industry sectors for young adults at the start of their careers.

Students would rather be working in oil; anything other than mining.

To underline the sector’s workforce challenges, the McKinsey report also estimates that the total number of mining engineering graduates in Australia fell 63 per cent in just four years, between 2014 and 2018, and 39% in the US between 2016 and 2020. 

There are, of course, many reasons for this reduction in the industry’s talent pipeline.

The perceptions of remote work or the boom-and-bust nature of the sector are likely to play a role.

It’s also true that technically-minded students, today, have a far wider choice of potential career options – ranging from IT and cybersecurity; to the health-care professions; or machine learning and AI.

These looming talent shortages present a genuine challenge for the sector.

Because securing that future workforce pipeline – from school, through university, and onto mine sites or remote mining hubs – may prove to be one of the sector’s biggest roadblocks to realising the growth opportunities in critical minerals.

The McKinsey report on the future of the mining workforce offers some useful advice to the sector on addressing these prospective talent shortfalls.

For instance, it suggests that mining companies must start treating talent development, recruitment, and retention as a key strategic pillar of the business, rather than as a “HR problem”.

McKinsey also suggests that the sector needs to more clearly identify the skills that will matter to its future and invest in them.

And a third piece of advice from McKinsey involves taking a bolder approach in relation to social and sustainability issues.

It’s a point that Paul Klein also articulated recently in an article for Forbes magazine.

In his words: “Moving forward, leaders in this industry need to recognize that business success, climate action, and attracting the next generation of employees are indivisible. This is what the future of mining looks like”.

Building that reputation for responsible, sustainable approaches to mining that are in tune with the concerns of local communities and Indigenous owners is going to be vitally important in terms of attracting talent.

In each of these areas, universities can be your partner.

We can work collaboratively with you on more innovative pathways into mining-related programs, or by giving students greater exposure to the mining sector by offering targeted opportunities for work integrated learning.

We can improve the diversity of talent pathways into the sector, for instance through scholarship programs funded jointly with industry, targeted particularly at those from regional and remote areas.

We can help to profile the sector to students as one that is at the cutting edge of technological developments – in which automation, machine learning, and advanced data analytics will increasingly transform the face of modern mining.

And we can help the mining sector to more clearly articulate a core premise that, on the face of it, seems counter-intuitive to many young people.

That is, that by choosing a career in mining they can be actively involved in the transition to a net zero future – and play a role in solving the existential challenge of climate change.

This leads me to the second area that I wanted to discuss today – and that involves the opportunity for universities and the sector to partner on mining research and innovation.

All over the world, universities are constantly extending the boundaries of what is known through research in every area of human endeavour. 

In this way, universities produce new inventions, as well as the vital inputs for a thriving innovation ecosystem.

And, to return to the point that I made at the very start of this speech, the creation of new knowledge, ideas, and innovations – for the benefit of industry and society more broadly – is central to the mission of universities globally.

We recognise, however, that we need great partners in order to achieve real impact.

And we especially need close, collaborative partnerships between (1) industry, (2) government, and (3) universities, to cultivate the kind of innovation that can be socially and economically transformational.

Or, as Australia’s former Chief Scientist Ian Chubb so astutely put it, when it comes to innovation: “It takes three to tango”.

Here in Australia, there’s a long and well-documented history of our universities producing world-leading research that has ultimately been commercially developed offshore – by international partners.

From a parochial, domestic perspective, this means that Australia has missed some really valuable opportunities to build new industries, jobs, and national prosperity.

However, in recent years there has been a very concerted effort to create a more joined-up innovation ecosystem in Australia, with those three partners – industry, government, and universities – working in close partnership.

A key example of this is the $370 million that the Federal Government recently invested into the Trailblazer Universities Program.

This funding has been allocated to six major university-based projects, with the sole objective of cultivating partnerships and innovation in industry sectors where Australia has clear competitive strengths.

And, naturally, one of those priority sectors is the mining sector.

The Resources Technology and Critical Minerals Trailblazer project is based at Curtin University in Perth – and it’s being supported by UQ and James Cook University, here in Queensland.

This is a multi-million-dollar, four-year collaborative partnership that involves universities and industry partners working together to accelerate innovation and commercialisation opportunities across Australia’s critical minerals supply chain.

It has a particular focus on industry engagement and technological innovation that will enable an expansion of critical minerals mining, in Australia, at scale, in relation to energy resources, storage, generation and transmission.

Over 30 industry partners have now joined the Trailblazer project to collaborate on solving the key challenges related to technology readiness in critical minerals in order to accelerate deployment.

Importantly, the collaboration model involves university experts being embedded within industry to advance projects, or to solve challenges, that have been identified by the industry, or its suppliers.

Another encouraging local example of joint industry, government and university collaboration on R&D is the Queensland Government’s commitment to investing $75 million in a Resources Common User Facility to be based in Townsville.

That facility will be a valuable hub for mining companies to trial new production processes for the extraction and processing of critical minerals – with an initial focus on vanadium.

To meet these challenges, UQ’s Sustainable Minerals Institute is also working with the Queensland Department of Resources to find new ways to source minerals from mine waste; to mine and extract minerals in a way that meets current and future social and environmental expectations; and to seek circular economy solutions that transform the industry.

I want to conclude now by reiterating the point that I made at the very start of this speech.  

And that is this: as the global community plots a path to a net zero future, the mining sector has an absolutely critical role to play.

And we see our role, in the university sector, as working in close partnership with you, offering support through our education; and our research and innovation.

But it goes much further than this, to the role that we play in engaging and understanding the communities in which we are embedded.

As Australia’s former Chief Scientist Alan Finkel notes in his recent book, ‘Powering Up: Unleashing the Clean Energy Supply Chain’:

“The expansion of mining is key to our green future. However, it must not be achieved at the expense of local communities and the local environment.”

Without doubt, the path to a net zero future will be challenging.

But, every day, that pathway is also becoming clearer.

We understand the imperative.

We are fast developing and finessing the required technology.

We also know, from experience, that key sectors, such as the mining sector, are adept at moving quickly – and delivering at scale.

And there’s one other thing that we know with absolute certainty. It’ll require a spirit of partnership and collaboration – between industry, government, and the university sector – in order to successfully negotiate the difficult path ahead.

From our perspective, in the university sector, we won’t stand aloof.

Universities are places of great inspiration, and of great industry. 

They are places that prepare the next generation to be the shapers and the leaders of the future, while at the same time pushing back the frontiers of knowledge.

Universities are also home to experts in every field of human knowledge.

This standing army of experts is eager to be involved in helping the mining sector to address the complex economic, regulatory, policy and social issues that must be negotiated in order to successfully make the transition to a net zero future.

They are ready, willing, and able to work with you.

They are reaching out.

And my main message to you is to reach back into the university sector, for the benefit of your company, your industry – and the planet.

Thank you.