The Pilbara Minerals Ltd (ASX: PLS) share price is in focus after it announced plans for solar energy in the progress towards net zero emissions.
Pilbara Minerals is an Australian lithium company that owns and operates its Pilgangoora Project in the Pilbara region in Western Australia. It is one of the world’s largest hard-rock lithium operations.
Green future for Pilbara Minerals
The company announced that it has signed a contract to have solar energy at its Pilgangoora site. The 15 year contract to construct, operate and maintain a 6MW solar array has been awarded to Contract Power Australia (CPA), which is a subsidiary of Pacific Energy Group.
Management said that a key factor in awarding this renewable energy project to CPA was its established track record to deliver turnkey energy projects.
The lithium miner said that this is an important part of its commitment to environmentally friendly power solutions. This move towards solar energy forms part of its transition to net zero emissions in the decade of 2040 (Scope 1 and Scope 2).
Pilbara Minerals will maintain the option to purchase the solar energy facility outright in the future.
The solar array
The solar energy array, or “solar farm” in simple terms, will be designed to allow expansion of solar capacity in the future, with the potential for battery storage.
Pilbara Minerals said that this project is estimated to replace 3.8 million litres of diesel fuel use a year.
Early site works have already been completed and the solar energy farm is expected to be operational from the end of August 2022.
Thinking ahead
Pilbara Minerals said that its future plans are to create a local power network joining its two plants at Pilgangoora, this will create further efficiencies.
Thinking longer term, it plans to integrate with other northern Pilbara power and/or gas and renewables sources. This will further its efficiency gains on its path to net zero carbon.
Summary thoughts on the Pilbara Minerals share price
Lithium has a clear growth runway with demand for electric batteries growing for cars, solar energy and more.
However, there is a lot of investor hype around lithium shares at the moment. The Pilbara Minerals share price has risen by over 505% in the past year.
Like any mining company, the Pilbara Minerals share price will largely be tied to the price of the resource it provides. It depends what the lithium price does over the coming years and it may turn out to be cyclical, similar to iron ore.
I am really enjoying seeing ASX miners announce green and renewable changes lately. the charge towards a greener world seems to be snowballing faster now and it is great to see it unfold.
