Kennecott Copper: Environmental Stewardship

Environmental Stewardship

Kennecott has self-imposed environmental targets that drive continual improvement in environmental performance. Primary indicators for environmental performance include greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), water consumption, energy consumption, land use, and environmental incidents. Metrics are generated and tracked to monitor electricity, natural gas, and other energy use. Greenhouse gas emissions and energy are then plotted against copper cathode production to determine existing trends as well as to project future performance and set future improvement targets.

Kennecott has a number of projects in various states of planning that are expected to provide the reductions necessary to reach our targets. These include bulk floatation upgrades at the Copperton Concentrator to increase copper recovery, use of fuel additives at the Mine to reduce diesel consumption and multiple improvement projects at the Smelter and Refinery focused on reducing natural gas and electricity consumption.

Note: The Kennecott Utah Copper Smelter is one of the cleanest in the world. The stack is 1,200 feet tall, 124 feet in diameter at the base, 40 feet in diameter at the top, tapering from a 30 inch thickness a the base to 12 inches thick a the top.