The Challenge

Integra Resources Corp. is committed to mining in a way that has a net positive impact. To accomplish this, the company has taken steps to evaluate various aspects of sustainability and ask: What does it look like to operate a mine that has a net positive environmental, social, and economic impact? 

The Solution

Measure Baseline

Last year, WSC helped Integra publish the company’s first sustainability report using the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) framework. This included reporting on Governance, Social, and Environmental (GSE) topics – like employee diversity, company policies, safety, and GHG emissions. 

Ask Stakeholders: “What is important?”

Over this past year and through an extensive stakeholder and goal-setting process, WSC supported Integra in identifying which sustainability topics are most relevant and have an impact on Integra and/or its stakeholders – also known as “materiality.” The materiality assessment helped the company in seeing how key topics overlap and where to strategically set goals and objectives with clear tactics, milestones, and metrics that will reduce overall company and investor risk and optimize performance – and inform the topic prioritization in Integra’s next sustainability report. 

Evaluate Options and Find Win-Wins

In addition to the corporate sustainability work, WSC provided technical analysis for the DeLamar Pre-feasibility Study (PFS), looking for pathways to reduce emissions and costs simultaneously. In close collaboration with the mining engineers designing the project, we analyzed the tradeoffs between an electric light rail haulage system (Railveyor) that generates electricity on downhill hauls and diesel haul trucks for a portion of the ore haulage. Even with pre-inflation fuel prices, the economic advantage of light rail was clear. The case for electrification grows as fuel prices increase. Also, our team evaluated onsite energy generation through solar, batteries, and natural gas – which also had a clear economic advantage.

Between electrification and onsite renewable energy generation, the DeLamar project will reduce costs by more than $83 million and GHG emissions by more than 165 thousand metric tonnes of CO2e over the estimated 16-year mine life. 

WSC continues to provide guidance and support to Integra Resources Corp. for creating an energy work plan that includes electric vehicle technologies and clean energy generation infrastructure best suited to their operations.