A fishermen, Hermante, 60, poses in the polluted water in the fishing village of Mandiodo near a mining site, on August 3, 2023 in North Konawe, Southeast Sulawesi, Indonesia.Ulet Ifansasti/Getty Images
Mark Selby is the founder and CEO of Canada Nickel Co.
Blood diamonds, blood cobalt, and now blood nickel. Governments leading the global shift toward electric vehicles promise cleaner cities and a new era of sustainable energy and improved resource usage. But just as governments promote EVs on environmental grounds, manufacturers are forced to source nickel from a region enabling the wanton destruction of ecologically sensitive lands, reckless treatment of workers, and the fundamental deterioration of living conditions. There is only one solution to this problem: the world needs more Canadian nickel.
Chinese and Indonesian companies mining and processing nickel on the east coast of Sulawesi and the surrounding Indonesian islands are responsible for a long series of tragic and fatal work accidents. Buried under slag, crushed by heavy equipment, and killed in falls, workers in Indonesian nickel mines and processing plants face conditions that thankfully have been largely eliminated from Western workplaces. And the communities that surround them suffer daily from heavy pollution.
The two processes that Chinese companies use to produce nickel in Indonesia come with a heavy environmental footprint. One uses large amounts of coal and coal-fired electricity, resulting in nickel products with a carbon footprint of 50 to 80 tonnes of CO2 per tonne of nickel. That compares with less than five tonnes of CO2 for Canadian ultramafic nickel deposits, and certain Canadian deposits which capture enough CO2 to have a net negative carbon footprint. The other uses high-pressure acid leaching, which results in large volumes of chemically reactive tailings that are either dumped in the ocean or stored on land in a seismic region and monsoon rainfall climate. Neither are conducive to the safe storage of tailings.
A recent Bloomberg investigation found that nickel from the Indonesia Morowali Industrial Park is present in the supply chain that feeds virtually every major seller of EVs. Nickel is essential to EVs because the more you use in a battery, the farther the car can drive on a single charge. While each of the major EV manufacturers have adopted extensive pledges on responsible sourcing, they are still dependent on supply from regions where nickel is being mined in a manner that poses serious risks to workers and the environment.
From 2015 to 2022, Trend Asia, an NGO based in Jakarta, tracked 53 fatalities at Indonesian nickel facilities. In the first 11 months of 2023, it recorded 17. The data around injuries, unfortunately, is much harder to come by and often goes unrecorded.
When confronted with the realities of how certain diamonds and cobalt resources were being produced, consumers demanded responsible manufacturers stop using blood diamonds and blood cobalt in their products. It is time consumers demand the same from car manufacturers and others using blood nickel.
Canada has an important role to play in providing an alternative source for cleaner, safer nickel. After pressure from Premier Doug Ford, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland recently initiated a consultation that will consider a surtax on Chinese electric vehicles. In doing so, Canada would join other Western countries in their efforts to balance economic interests with environmental, labour, and trade policy concerns.
But there is more Canada must do to take the lead in reshaping North America’s EV market. We must incentivize North American investors to support the development of more Canadian mines, powered by our greener energy grids, and employed by workers protected by some of the best labour and safety standards in the world. Simply put, Canada has an opportunity to secure North America’s supply chain in a safe, clean, and most importantly, ethical way.
Canadian ultramafic nickel deposits, found in certain regions, not only minimize environmental harm but also contribute to the process of carbon capture. Some of the minerals contained in these deposits have the capacity to spontaneously absorb and sequester CO2 from the atmosphere through a natural process called mineral carbonation, one of the only known ways to permanently capture and store CO2. Canadians should be proud of these mining resources, and we should promote them to the world as a clean, green alternative to Indonesian nickel.
It is time for Canadian policy makers to recognize the strategic imperative of getting our nickel out of the ground and into the market – fast. It is estimated by BloombergNEF that Indonesia may account for nearly two-thirds of the global nickel supply by 2030. We cannot allow the blood nickel trend to continue for moral, ethical, and environmental reasons. Canada must provide a real alternative to blood nickel and help to ethically support global supply chains.