The Art of the Possible: How collaboration is driving the transformation of large haul truck fleets

By Dana Cartwright, Senior Manager — Climate and Innovation, ICMM.

Typically, 30-50% of mine site emissions (Scope 1) are directly linked to the use of diesel haul trucks1 - the vehicles that carry massive loads of mined material across sites. Currently, more than 28,000 large mining trucks are operating across the globe, moving billion of tonnes of ore every year and producing more than 69 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions in the process.  The largest haul trucks are able to move up to 400 tonnes at a time — the same as carrying around 100 adult elephants on each truck.   

Decarbonising these trucks seemed like a quick win for bringing down emissions. However, the solution wasn’t quite as easy as simply swapping out one type of vehicle for another, not least because zero emission haul trucks didn’t exist at that time. 

Competition and collaboration make for unlikely, but effective bedfellows 

Enabling zero carbon solutions for mobile equipment at a global scale is one of three core ambitions of ICMM’s Innovation for Cleaner, Safer Vehicles (ICSV) initiative. Within this initiative, ICMM member companies, that collectively represent around a third of the global mining and metals industry, work closely with their competitors as well as with major original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and technology solution providers to develop the solutions needed to accelerate the introduction of zero emission haul trucks.  

The broader group is collaborating to focus on common problems in a non-competitive, anti-trust space that helps to unlock investment in research and development of new solutions. ICSV members have established multiple collaborations to pilot breakthrough solutions at sites with the right conditions for implementation, where green energy supply, supporting infrastructure or mine design can enable more effective testing of new technologies. We are now anticipating that zero emission haul trucks will be available at scale on sites before 2030 instead of by 2040, which had previously been considered an ambitious target. The key constraint now is operational readiness, including training, change management and safety controls to enable the transition. 

This is why in June, ICMM convened a week-long Innovation Session for members and OEMs from more than two dozen companies to share the knowledge they’ve gained on the challenges and opportunities for successful deployment and adoption of zero emission haul trucks. Innovation Sessions are a unique format to facilitate collaboration, offering a different experience and level of engagement than other forums and conferences on similar issues. They support the exchange of ideas and knowledge, but more importantly call attention to specific complex issues or ‘wicked problems’ which need focused engagement to develop solutions. 

The ICSV Innovation Session invited external decarbonisation and modelling experts to share their expertise and practical experience, helping to inform key decarbonisation decisions that ICSV members will need to make in the near future. OEMs widely recognised across the industry for their unique innovative approaches and quick pace of development were also invited to take part in this session to provide fresh perspectives, as the group worked to redefine the next set of common problems we all need to solve to move the industry forward. 

By physically bringing together practitioners, technical experts and wider industry perspectives over an extended period of time, on sites where they can put theory to the test, we’re able to dive more deeply on specific technological, economic and operational aspects of decarbonisation to overcome common challenges. Diverse perspectives and experience from different regional, commodity and operating contexts of companies enable more robust discussion and concept testing to identify and accelerate the development of solutions. On site, participants can see principles we talk about put into practice in the real world. This approach between companies that are normally competitors of each other, also unearths strategies which can be applied more widely to other sectors which are also working hard to decarbonise. 

Accelerating Innovation: Learnings 

Since the ICSV initiative was first convened in 2018, a lot of progress has been made toward understanding what it will take to transition large haul truck fleets, but there is still some way to go to make this a reality. The Innovation Session touched upon some deeply technical as well as highly strategic discussions. Here are a few insights, adding flavour to the usual innovation ‘recipes for success’:  

• Knowledge is power. I have heard from many early members of the ICSV initiative, that we first embarked on this journey “not knowing what we didn’t know”. What we know now is that there are a huge number of factors to consider to successfully transition from diesel to zero emission haul trucks, depending on the operating conditions and requirements of a particular site, life of mine, age of fleet, renewable power and/or fuel availability, and many other equally important pieces of the puzzle. However, it boils down to a few aspects: understanding the technologies and solutions that are right for ‘right now’ to initiate a mine site’s transition and defining the unique pathway for each site to achieve zero emission fleets in the future — giving time for developing solutions to be piloted, refined and brought to scale. 

• True collaboration means having honest conversations, being willing to ask for help when you don’t know all the answers — and equally – willing to share the few you do have. This is necessary to succeed, particularly regarding the safety considerations for an industry that is transforming the way it operates with huge equipment and new technologies. For example, there is a lack of regulation for various zero emission haul truck solutions, meaning mining companies and OEMs need to work closely with regulators to understand the risks of powering and operating these new technologies (e.g. in managing the high electric voltages required) and develop standards for keeping workers safe.  
   
  Sharing risk assessments, critical safety controls, training and change management practices to keep our workers safe is fundamental and will be the pace setter for mining, and other industries, to decarbonise. Everyone should be safe at work, and we will only be able to move forward when this is the case.  

• We go faster when we go together than when we go it alone. By bringing competing interests together to find win-win solutions, the pace of innovation, level of investment and commitment from different parties helps to accelerate progress in the long run. After six years, it is now widely recognised that the development of the technological innovations and retrofit solutions for large haul trucks are well underway, with pilots for fuel cell and battery trucks ongoing since 2022. We now need others to help us foster the enabling conditions, or broader ‘ecosystem’ to support adoption of these solutions at scale. This is a remarkable accomplishment in a relatively short period of time, demonstrating that by working together ICSV members have the power to shift and unlock what were previously seen as obstacles for progress.  

• If you don’t need to reinvent the wheel, don’t — just enhance it if you can. What fills me with optimism is seeing the vast amount of work and initiatives underway within and beyond the mining industry to transition to a low carbon future. However, this means we also need to be careful about what we’re focusing on and the problems we’re trying to solve, since others might already be doing it better, quicker or with greater scale, which will ultimately help our work. To that end, while we focus on the trucks, technology and deployment solutions needed at mine sites, we can work with others to identify the additional support we need and share what we’ve learned along the way to put all of the pieces of the puzzle together. If we focus on what is holding us back, we can overcome critical constraints more effectively with the weight of the broader industry to support us. 

The technical and practical considerations which will inform the transition to zero emission fleets are hugely complex, and we’ve learned that we need support across a wider ecosystem to get the infrastructure in place with enough green power and clean energy to help us meet our collective ambitions.  

Through the ICSV model, ICMM members and our partners will continue to work toward a rapid and safe transition to zero emission haul trucks which will enable the industry to meet its commitments on climate, fostering innovation across different technologies, regions, and commodities through collaboration and leadership.  

We know we can’t do this alone. We’ve been able to solve certain pieces of the puzzle, but decarbonisation will take all sorts of actors to work together and contribute to the big picture. We need policy makers to support incentives for investment (like we’ve seen work very successfully in Chile, where supportive policy has led to the development of an increasingly renewable power supply). We need energy providers to help us get the amount of clean power we need, regulators to ensure we can undertake this transition safely, financiers to invest in the technologies and operations of the future, technology suppliers to develop the solutions to our wicked problems, and many others to help us get there.  

If you can support us on this journey, we would love to hear from you.