Carbon intensity-based approach for analyzing the environmental performance of nickel production in Indonesia.

Nickel is a mineral commodity that plays an essential role in the metals trade. The demand for nickel worldwide trends to increase yearly, with a total reserve recorded at 89 million tons, and Indonesia currently has the highest nickel deposits. In addition, nickel production requires bulk energy for processing nickel ores, which would subsequently contribute to increasing Greenhouse gas (GHG) concentration in the atmosphere. This study aims to estimate the carbon intensity per ton product of nickel in Indonesia and to identify its main contributors. A nickel processing plant in Indonesia with a production capacity of 250,000 tons that uses RKEF technology was taken as a case study. The method for estimating the GHG emission is adapted from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The result of GHG Emissions is divided by the total product of nickel to generate the carbon intensity per ton of nickel product per year. The result showed that a total of 2.6 million tons of CO2-e per year was generated for nickel production. The total carbon intensity of nickel production was 10.5 ton CO2-e/ton nickel product generated by five areas: power plant, construction and engineering, processing plant, auxiliary, and transport logistic. The carbon intensity of nickel production in Indonesia appears to be in the range of carbon intensity of other nickel companies worldwide. In addition, hydrocarbon-based materials utilization such as coal and diesel fuel were found to be the main contributor to high GHG emissions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]