10 Benefits of a Connected Mining Sustainability Plan
- September 30, 2025
- Best Practices
- Automation
Digitally transform your mining operations to unlock new efficiencies with Rockwell Automation Solutions
Is all the data across your mining operations disconnected and siloed (or dare we say mineshafted)? You are not alone. It is difficult to be efficient across an entire mining operation with so many processes happening at once.
How do you identify the right materials to harvest as the market needs them? Will your systems and machinery be ready to perform when needed? Don’t get overwhelmed with questions. Learn how you can aggregate and contextualize information to unlock new efficiencies and make faster, smarter decisions.
GAIN MINE-TO-MARKET INTEGRATION & VISIBILITY
Mining automation solutions from Rockwell Automation can help collect, aggregate, and analyze data across your operation. These tools also reveal data trends and dependencies that mining operations have historically struggled to act on—empowering you to make faster, more informed decisions for your mine.
Making data driven decisions helps you improve productivity, reduce spend and reach sustainability goals like increasing energy efficiency and improving water usage. Why is having a mining sustainability plan so important?
BENEFITS OF A CONNECTED MINING SUSTAINABILITY PLAN
1. More Efficient Energy Usage
Mining operations can better manage energy usage by enabling contextualized analytics in their processes. When you combine energy data from disparate sources, those advanced analytics allow employees to monitor and compare energy performance in real time while reporting any inconsistencies or anomalies across the enterprise.
These pre-built performance dashboards monitor energy consumption, demand, intensity and energy cost allocation to ensure a more sustainable energy management system.
2. More Renewable Energy Value
Power management systems enable data acquisition, alarm processing, updates to the user interface and the execution of control actions across a mining operation. Businesses can harness the power of renewable energies, like solar or wind, by controlling the automation and condition monitoring to best fit their current needs.
Unifying this process enables integrated control, so you can more effectively use power, in-depth safety precautions and advanced analytics.
3. Crusher Automation
Improved control and monitoring of crushers leads to energy optimization. Mining operations can lower maintenance costs, reduce mechanical costs and cause fewer disturbances by integrating both process and motor control.
As you upgrade and automate crushers, you can maintain a high level of production consistency and save on energy related costs.
4. Smarter Pump Control
With smart pump controls, mining operations can increase pump output to meet increased capacity demands, reduce engineering and installation costs and avoid unexpected downtime. Your business can save a lot of energy by running pumps at their most efficient speeds to meet minimum demand.
Smart pump controls also enable remote monitoring and controlling of pumping stations with real-time visualization and automatic alert systems to ensure consistency across the operation.
Infographic: Sustainability In Mining
This infographic illustrates how mining operations are using technology to meet sustainability goals. It highlights innovations in emissions monitoring, energy optimization, water recovery, and safety – showing how automation and analytics are helping reduce environmental impact and improve operational efficiency.
5. Water Usage Visibility
Water metrics and balances give you a more holistic understanding of water usage in your mine, so you can easily identify opportunities for sustainability improvement.
You’ll get access to key information like water inflows and outflows associated with each site. That includes water withdrawal, discharge and consumption. Water metrics and balances also enable insight into the water flows and dynamics internal to the site, including process water use, reuse, and recycling.
6. Better Water Quality
Ensuring water quality means keeping your mining operation ahead of the curve when issues arise in your water supplies. Real-time water quality monitoring systems can quickly and accurately determine the quality of your drinking, surface, ground, waste or process water. This makes data utilization easier for your workforce.
Mines can have lasting effects on a community’s water supply. That’s why it is critical to monitor the water you are utilizing to ensure sustainability in the future.
7. Better Asset Availability, Utilization and Efficiency
You can maximize your mining operations’ asset availability, utilization and efficiency with reporting and analytics software for environmental data. This software enables pollution source identification, air quality management, regulation and forecasting, which improves infrastructure planning and human behaviors.
The software can improve sustainability by ensuring that your mine is operating efficiently, compliant with environmental regulations and safer for your employees.
8. Advanced Continuous Emissions Monitoring
Implementing a predictive emissions monitoring system (PEMS) provides a cost-effective, certifiable solution that makes emissions overseeing more sustainable. The PEMS deploys at a faster rate, reducing cost, time, project risk, record-keeping and recording cost. Plus, it helps maintain compliance standards with a high rate of accuracy and reliability.
9. Seamless Integration
An integrated control system gives you a unified view of your processing areas. This reduces engineering risks and is easier to operate, maintain and modify. Seamless integration between critical areas of your plant allows you to connect process, discrete, power, information and safety control into one plant-wide infrastructure. This creates an integrated environment for configuration, operation and maintenance.
An integrated environment allows you to identify wasteful areas of your operation, enable a more sustainable, lasting approach and empower mine operators to better perform their duties.
10. Reduced Maintenance Engineering Costs
Information-enabled conveyors and stacker reclaimers deliver real-time performance and operating data that can help you reach sustainability goals. Using integrated architectures with remote monitoring from anywhere, anytime can help reduce maintenance engineering costs and improve machine efficiency while bolstering sustainability efforts through the reduction in associated waste.
GET A MORE PERSONALIZED MINING SUSTAINABILITY PLAN
Want more details on how investing in your energy, water and waste sustainability efforts can help you improve cost savings, efficiency and worker enablement? Reach out to Rob Juhl to see how Van Meter and Rockwell Automation can guide your digital transformation.