Climate change

Throughout the coal mining process, the heavy machinery we use consumes diesel and electricity which in turn produces greenhouse gases. Our products also create greenhouse gas emissions when used by our customers for power generation and converting iron ore into steel. 

Our approach

As part of the Rio Tinto Group, Rio Tinto Coal Australia has been actively addressing climate change concerns since 1996 through a range of business improvement and energy management initiatives.

We are committed to ensuring that the people and products of our business form part of the solution to climate change.  We are investing heavily into research and development initiatives aimed at finding ways to reduce our energy use and greenhouse gas emissions throughout the entire coal chain. In time, we believe this builds capacity to deliver a sustainable future for all and will help us ensure our continued access to markets and license to operate.

At the start of 2007, we launched a Climate Change Action Plan to address climate change within the business.  The plan is multi faceted and aims to create an enabling environment where all employees can contribute to the solution for climate change.  We have objectives in four key areas:

• Clean coal - actively research and promote technologies that reduce carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions from the use of coal
• Energy management – improve energy use at our operations, projects and supply chain, and embed the process into Rio Tinto Coal Australia's systems
• Designing for the future – design our projects, recognising risks from a changing climate and opportunities in a changing policy environment
• Awareness raising – raise awareness with our employees, the communities where we operate, our customers, government, suppliers and the industry that this is an issue that requires us to change how we all currently operate.

Towards the end of 2007, we undertook a review of the Climate Change Action plan.

Results

Despite these encouraging programmes, we did not meet our voluntary 2007 targets for the amount of energy used and greenhouse gases emitted per tonne of coal produced.  Port and rail constraints contributed to this result.

Read our 2007 energy use and greenhouse gas emissions results.