Integration of renewable energy into the copper mining industry: A multi-objective approach

This paper proposes a methodology for designing a solar-biogas hybrid renewable energy system considering the integration of renewable energy’s variability and its intermittency nature. It also studies for the first time the use of biogas to complement the unreliability of solar energy for a large-scale industry like mining, considering its unique characteristics. The proposed model minimizes annual costs and greenhouse gas emissions, configuring a hybrid renewable system that optimizes its usual economic benefits and defines its topology to improve the environmental impact while ensuring the energy demand. The results indicate that solar energy and biogas are attractive options to supply the electrical requirements of a copper mining process, as they bring economic and environmental benefits. However, a deeper environmental evaluation of the system is needed. The findings also show a trade-off between costs and greenhouse gas emissions; therefore, to promote the minimization of emissions in the system studied, the carbon tax price should be between 100–1,000 USD/ton CO 2 -eq. Finally, installing the proposed hybrid energy system could help reduce between 30% and 80% of the emissions compared to the actual scenario, and it could reduce around 50% of the total emissions in the next 30 years. • Renewable energy has a key role in the decarbonization of the cooper mining industry. • There is a trade-off between costs and GHG emissions. • A deeper analysis of the environmental impact of energy systems is needed. • A carbon tax between 100–1,000 USD/ton CO 2 -eq is needed to minimize GHG emissions.