Greenhouse gases generated by gold mining. The example of the Apumayo Mine, Peru

Abstract

In Peru, there are no established methodologies to assess the effects of economic activities on climate change, probably because there is no research to demonstrate these effects at the national level. Even mining being an important economic activity in Peru and the one that has made the greatest progress in environmental regulation in recent years, it does not have research focused on climate change in specific cases. However, there are calculation tools, such as the carbon footprint, that measures the total amount of greenhouse gases (GHG) generated by an activity and gives us a scope of the climate change impacts of this activity or activities. In that sense, the objective of this study was to determine the carbon footprint generated by the exploitation activities of a gold mine in Peru, and thus give a first scope of the impacts on climate change, based on the exploitation of a goldfield formed by volcanic rocks and quaternary deposits. As a result, it was obtained that, due to the significant volume of petrol used in the transportation of ore and waste rock with heavy tippers, the exploitation activities of a gold mine in Peru contributes significantly to GHG and therefore to climate change. Total GHG emissions of carbon footprint from gold production activities at the Apumayo mine in 2017 were 24977.1 tCO2eq.