CALAMA, Chile—The three industrial boilers at the state-owned Codelco mine high in the mountains here once consumed 67,000 barrels of diesel a year to turn out shiny copper sheets for export. Now, the job is powered by nearly 3,000 solar panels that take advantage of the Atacama Desert’s cloudless blue sky. As the cost of solar and wind power declines, renewable energy has become increasingly attractive to power-hungry mining companies. Nowhere, though, is it more prevalent than in resource-rich Chile, where companies have...
Ernst & Young estimates that mines in the Atacama Desert will invest upwards of Chile $1bn in renewable energy projects by 2022 , a huge rise from 2013 figures of $ 37mn . In US , the Codelco Gabriela Mistral mine is currently powered by 3,000 solar panels, which is 80% of its total electricity usage, having switched from using 3,000 solar of diesel per year to generate all of its power previously.