Opportunity

With increasing global demand for energy combined with growing environmental awareness, there is an immediate and acute need for clean renewable energy resources.

Energy availability over the next 10 years will be the leading challenge for the mining sector and will compel permanent industry-wide structural changes. Some current examples of energy difficulties are:

• The struggle of gold producers to curb the dramatic rise in production costs and mine development on time and on budget directly attributable to the proliferation of traditional fossil fuel energy prices.

• 80% of the world's aluminum and smelting capacities are located in nations at risk of, or experiencing, electrical shortages.

• Chile, the world's largest copper producing country, is facing its worst drought in fifty years resulting in the lowering of hydropower reserves. The government is looking to its mining sector to curtail energy consumption which, in turn, is driving the prices of copper, aluminum, gold and platinum to record levels.

• The Congolese government, the largest producer of cobalt in the world, gave an order on April 26th, 2008 for the reduction of electricity usage by mining companies to 40% due to the theft of some 1800 meters of power transmission cables. Theft of electrical cables to strip their metals is a persistent problem.

There are extensive environmental and financial costs for power produced with fossil fuels and given recent predictions by the International Energy Association (IEA), the reliance on traditional energy sources must be curtailed. The IEA has stated that world-wide demand over the next two decades will top 116 barrels a day (compared to the current 87 million barrels per day), but, due to diminished investment and aging oil fields, the industry will struggle to scarcely achieve 100 million barrels per day.