The Supplementary EIS for Olympic Dam mine expansion reveals that the BHP Billiton is only proposing to commit around 3.5% of electricity demand for the expansion to come from accredited renewable energy sources.
Conservation Council SA CE Tim Kelly said: "BHP Billiton use a complicated presentation of the data to make their pitiful commitment to renewable energy sound higher than it is. Cogeneration from gas at the site to produce heat and electricity is not renewable energy. It is just an obvious efficiency opportunity."
" The fact is, the total commitment from market-purchased renewable electricity is therefore around 400 GWh per annum (representing about 9% of the total expansion electricity demand and 7.5% of the total (existing plus expanded operation) electricity demand). " said Tim.
"This is just not good enough."
"There is no commitment for large scale renewable energy in this supplementary EIS. It appears that BHP Billiton is not intending to contribute to reducing South Australia's greenhouse gas emissions or enhancing the State's Renewable Energy systems in any meaningful way," he said.
Under the BHP Billiton proposal, South Australia's greenhouse gas emissions would increase from between 2.5 to 4.5 million tonnes of greenhouse gasses per year.
Mr Kelly also expressed other concerns about the impact of the mine expansion.
"The protection measures to prevent birds from entering acidic tailings ponds are still not adequate. The measures proposed such as netting, if not done well may cause more entrapments. Commitments to further research in this area simply show that BHP Billiton can not guarantee that fauna will be protected.
"There are also no commitments for improved open and transparent reporting on environmental and environmental health issues associated with the expanded mine," he said.
The Conservation Council will continue to review the documents and will provide a more detailed assessment in the near future, including how the supplementary EIS has dealt with:
- the completeness of the greenhouse gas assessment in regard to the whole project and South Australia's emissions
- steps to prevent or offset greenhouse gas emissions
- what commitment is made to real accredited renewable energy
- the impacts of the desalination plant
- tailings management and liquid waste management
- bird deaths and impacts on biodiversity
- systems of reporting and accountability.
