Article By Colette Munro, Zone President, Schneider Electric, Pacific
Australia’s mining sector is entering a defining decade. Coordination between government and industry is strengthening, particularly around critical minerals and long-term supply. This is supporting a more stable outlook and reinforcing the role mining will play in Australia’s economic growth.
The industry is also sitting at the centre of the energy transition. Globally, demand for minerals that enable electrification is moving faster than GDP. By 2040, the IEA forecasts mineral demand from clean energy technologies will rise between two-to-four times.
At the same time, energy use is under-pressure, both from geopolitical challenges and expectations around emission reduction. This means the way mines operate, use energy, and create value are fundamentally changing.
Electrification is proving to be a practical strategy to strengthen efficiency, energy security and operational control, especially for remote and complex sites. As fuel logistics, price volatility and geopolitical uncertainty increase, mining leaders are re-thinking energy not just as an input cost, but as a core operational lever. Electrification enables a shift toward more predictable, locally controlled and optimised energy systems, without compromising production.
The way we power mines and associated infrastructure – and the way we manage that power – will be one of the biggest determinants of competitiveness in future.
Progress, however, remains uneven – shaped by a perception of high upfront costs, integration challenges with legacy infrastructure, and the practical challenges of operating in vast, varied terrains. A new mindset and approach are now needed.
Energy: from the engine room to the boardroom
Australia’s mining sector consumes around 10% of the nation’s total energy use and that consumption has been rising roughly 6% per year over the past decade. Most of this energy comes from diesel (41%), followed by natural gas (33%) and grid electricity (22%). The long?term trend, though, is clear: diesel’s share has already fallen from 49% to 41% over the last decade, largely replaced by gas and grid power.
That shift is not ideological. It’s based on economics, efficiency, and risk management.
In a world where geopolitics can impact supply chains overnight, Australia’s reliance on imports for more than 80% of diesel supply is an uncomfortable systemic risk. With diesel prices rising rapidly, industry leaders have warned it could add $5 billion a year to costs.
If you run a large, remote operation, you don’t need to be convinced that fuel volatility is a material business issue. You just need to decide what you’re going to do about it.
One leading operator has invested nearly $1bn to expand renewable power, building up to 2.3 gigawatts of capacity through wind, solar and batteries, with all power managed remotely. The expected savings could rise as high as $1.4bn annually.
At one mining operation in Canada, Schneider Electric helped transition an entirely diesel based, manually operated 25MW power system featuring 20+ generators and 7 distinct electrical zones into an automated, intelligent energy network. This involved: stabilizing existing renewables, optimising generator dispatch, and creating a new intelligent controller to automate the system.
This immediately reduced fuel usage, saving millions in OPEX, improved reliability, and reduced blackout risk. It also created a pathway to full electrification to meet the organisations upcoming net-zero goals.
The next decade will be electrified
Mining understands complexity better than almost any other sector: remote assets, harsh environments, long life cycles, ageing infrastructure, global supply chains, and relentless pressure to do more with less. What’s changed is what’s now possible.
Over the past decade, automation helped the industry lift productivity and lower costs. The decade ahead will be defined by something broader: energy technology, or the convergence of energy systems, industrial automation, and digital intelligence into a single, connected operating environment.
The pace of innovation means entirely new approaches are not just viable, they’re economical:
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Renewable generation has become dramatically more cost?competitive, with solar costs down 80% since 2008, and onshore wind costs down 50% over a similar period
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A Schneider Electric analysis of 11 operational sites around the world, including in Australia, found microgrids with AI-based predictive control achieved an 18% cost reduction on average.
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In WA, Schneider Electric has worked with partners to develop a modular, utility scale Solar PV and BESS architecture to enable rapid rollout across multiple remote sites. This replicable engineering template includes digital twins simulating dispatch behaviour, PV curtailment, BESS cycling, and long-term degradation; power studies in ETAP covering dynamic load flow, short-circuit evaluation, protection coordination with DC fault modelling, cable sizing, and earthing analysis to comply with relevant Australian standards; and construction ready, detailed electrical designs compliant with AS/NZS and Australian utility requirements.
The implication for mining leaders is that electrification is no longer just a decarbonisation conversation. It’s about efficiency, resilience, and competitiveness.
Business leaders are waking up to the opportunity. In a recent survey by Schneider Electric of 500 Australian executives, more than half (51%) are investing in energy efficiency, and 2 in 5 are concerned they’re falling behind peers in energy technology investment.
The cost of fragmentation
One expensive habit in industrial environments is treating energy and operational data as separate. Having systems sit in siloes is increasingly untenable as mines add electrified fleets, on?site generation, batteries, and more dynamic load profiles.
There’s also a cost to staying locked into closed, hardware?bound automation environments. One study by Omdia estimates closed automation can cost up to 7.5% of annual revenue in inefficiencies.
Advances in energy technology means you can now see operational, process, and energy insights in one place. When you connect power systems, industrial processes, and data, leaders can manage performance, reliability and energy use together, not as parallel programs.
What integration looks like in practice
EcoStruxure for Mining is designed to integrate power and process to improve operational and energy efficiency. AVEVA’s Unified Operations Centre brings together data from production, maintenance analytics, engineering documentation and more to remove silos and strengthen resilience by showing upstream and downstream impacts of operational changes
Saint-Gobain, one of the world’s largest producers of building materials, connected energy management and operations systems to save 14% of global utility costs, worth hundreds of millions of dollars. A waste-water operator in Australia, used EcoStruxture Automation Expert to develop an AI model that could predict a key sensor value with 99% accuracy, enabling maintenance without costly downtime.
What leadership looks like
Practically, the biggest step the industry can take is a mindset shift: rethink your energy assumptions. I recommend three steps anyone can start with:
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Reconsider your energy economics
The economics of electrification have shifted significantly. When was the last time you assessed energy costs, volatility exposure, and waste across the whole site, not just the power station? The combination of rapid innovation and changing global conditions have drastically altered the cost/benefit profile of energy investment.
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Stop separating energy and automation
If your automation and energy strategies are still separate, you’ll miss system-level efficiencies and resilience gains. We expect that in the next decade, energy technology will be just as important as operational tech pushing product over the conveyor belt.
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Experiment with what’s now proven
AI?enabled microgrids, mobile battery and energy storage systems, and software?defined power are just some of the technologies already delivering operational improvements and cost reductions. Now is the time to test, learn, and understand how and where electrification can benefit your organisation.
A decisive decade
None of this is about perfection. It’s about momentum.
With mining contributing between 4-7% of global emissions, the industry will continue to face scrutiny on sustainability and social licence, alongside rising compliance expectations. Energy, technology and geopolitics are shifting at the same time, and the operations that thrive will be the ones that connect power, processes, and automation.
The next decade of mining will be defined by how intelligently mines generate and manage energy to improve efficiency and resilience. That’s the opportunity in front of Australian mining, and it’s why I believe we are entering a new era: the energy technology decade.
