Pratt Rogers
His term, which began in January replaces Charles Kocsis who saw the department through the pandemic, a merger and a resurgence in recruitment of undergraduates to the department now in the College of Science. But the issues surrounding the shortage of mined critical minerals and materials (CMM) required for society’s vaulting demand for technological devices and the power to run them persist.
To meet the demand, humans will need to mine the same amount of copper between now and 2030/40 as we have in all of humanity. And, in terms of power transmission and distribution, the need for which will only continue to exponentially grow —whether from coal or a green energy source—copper will continue to be required along with a whole host of other critical minerals. To put a finer point on it: More than half of the periodic table goes into producing and running a smartphone, and anything in the periodic table must be extracted from the Earth.
Meeting that demand through mining is something Rogers calls our generation’s “moon shot” referring to NASA’s Apollo 11 program in the 1960s to get humans from the Earth to the moon and back safely. The technology around safe mining and mineral extraction has been the bread-and-butter of the department since it was first established in 1901, and that work continues. But today there are more cooks in the kitchen, not just mining professionals but environmentalists, government and tribal officials and other policy-makers … even cultural anthropologists who look at social and cultural impacts of mineral development.
These stakeholders, many in non-governmental organizations (NGOs, often referred to as “non-profits”), have traditionally been left to their own insulated silos which can turn into an echo-chamber. The result: hard conversations about pressing issues like the permitting of mines either don’t happen or are at intractable cross-purposes. In short, building consensus about how to move forward securing our energy and mineral future responsibly is a daunting task. Moon shot, indeed.
Three 'D's
“In the United States,” says Rogers from his office in the William Browning Building, “we have strong institutions with great environmental and human protections. And that’s phenomenal; it’s a mark of progress. But with institutions that strong, when trying to create industrial projects [new and retrofitted historical mines], the easy path to a 'no' is usually taken and the much more difficult path to a conditional 'yes' is passed over in litigation.”
U mining student with Pratt Roger (far right) at the Oyu Tolgoi mine, Mongolia, a joint venture between the Government of Mongolia, Rio Tinto Group, and Turquoise Hill Resources.
The hard conversations about complex issues society needs to have, Rogers believes, are not just about traditional mining. While they include extraction work, more broadly they involve the “three D’s” of this energy future moonshot: density — “a lot of output from little input, like nuclear power”; development and processing of CMM for purer, more concentrated material; and distribution — renewable energy sources like a wind and solar that require larger inputs, or “more stuff connecting all those things together.”
Finding consensus among various stakeholders is essential. “There are different paths you can take to get to carbon-free/neutral future and each of those paths break down minerals differently.”
Wider optimization algorithms
As department chair, Rogers knows that these conversations are not just between the three D’s but among stakeholders who need to arrive at a consensus — sooner rather than later. “It’s hard to break them [different constituents] out of being [animated by] a single issue. It’s hard for anyone to be able to appreciate that there are wider optimization algorithms that society has to take on when you're trying to solve for some sort of equilibrium for development or distribution.”
The university setting, he believes, is the best place for these formal debates in place of the silo-ed arguments staged on social media or even traditional media. As a first-generation college student from Arizona , Rogers remembers as a student working on a proposal with someone from anthropology. “I just went over to his office, and we had such a phenomenal discussion. The conversation was so cool. He was working on some stuff down in Mexico… and I realized that there were so many ways his perspectives could benefit, say, complex mineral development projects impacts on changing social cohesion and power dynamics.”
For mining engineers, there’s also collaboration to be done at the college level with mineral processing, and metallurgy and geological characterization all while making sure that students get full access to these educational moments, either formally or informally around shared social spaces. Sustaining this kind of educational nexus with a premium on student success is a priority for Rogers.