Can a Sustainable Mining Experiment in New Caledonia Power Tesla’s Ambitions?

One of the instigators of the violence, according to the authorities, was a tribal chief who is the elder brother of President Mapou.

Months of negotiation led to a compromise in March: 51 percent of Goro’s new ownership consortium, Prony Resources, is controlled by the provincial government, mine workers and local members of the community. Trafigura has 19 percent, rather than the 25 percent it was first slated to take.

The Tesla deal, announced half a year later, was greeted with jubilation by Kanak political leaders, who say that it will force Goro to adhere to high standards.

The Tesla executive who brokered the deal is Sarah Maryssael, the automaker’s group manager for the responsible sourcing of battery metals. An Australian engineer, she previously worked at Goro and knew how to navigate New Caledonia’s political complexities, according to the Prony chief executive, Mr. Beurrier, and local politicians.

“If we didn’t have the conflict, with the Kanaks standing up, we would not be where we are today,” said Roch Wamytan, the president of New Caledonia’s Congress. “Now we can sleep tranquilly, because we know the whole world is watching to make sure that we take green nickel seriously.”

“The Tesla deal made that happen,” he added.

A place in the Pacific

A brief lesson in hydrometallurgy: Goro’s earth is rich in nickel and cobalt, key ingredients in the lithium-ion batteries most commonly used for electric vehicles. To extract the useful minerals takes a lot of energy. That means a lot of hazardous emissions.

First, giant excavators, loaders and trucks running on fossil fuels scoop up the earth and trundle it away. Then the soil slurry is fed into a coal-fired facility that uses high-pressure blasts of sulfuric acid at high temperature to extract nickel and cobalt.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/30/world/asia/tesla-batteries-nickel-new-caledonia.html