Australia’s largest miner, BHP, is about to test run heavy-haul trucks with electric motors charged by renewable power in a bid to slash fossil fuel use that accounts for 40 per cent of its carbon emissions.
These huge ore trucks run 24 hours a day, burn vast reservoirs of diesel and are ubiquitous across Australia’s open-pit mines.
James Agar, BHP’s group procurement officer, is charged with cutting the company’s 40 per cent diesel emissions footprint. To do that, he needs to electrify its fleet of 650 heavy-haul trucks, weighing in at about 20 to 25 tonnes each, that currently run on polluting fossil fuels.