The Future of Mining in Cornwall

Mining of tin, copper and other metals has been carried out in Cornwall for at least 4000 years, peaking during the Industrial Revolution between the 18th to early 20th centuries. Active major metal mining ceased in the county within living memory with the closures of Geevor and South Crofty. Today, china clay extraction and mining heritage tourism are core aspects of Cornwall’s economy. In the last decade there has been a resurgence in interest in Cornwall’s mineral wealth, with the identification of resources of critical metals including lithium, tin and tungsten. With this modern ‘gold-rush’, fuelled by the pressing societal needs to adapt energy systems to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals and Paris Agreement targets, it is imperative that mistakes of the past are not repeated.

The Camborne School of Mines (CSM) has been leading research on critical metals for many years, in partnership with local government, exploration companies and NGOs. In one of the current projects, the Interdisciplinary Circular Economy Centre for Technology Metals (Met4Tech), CSM with its partners is investigating how circular economy principles can be embedded within geomodels to achieve a sustainable technology critical metals industry in Cornwall and elsewhere.

This #esi10 ‘The Future of Mining in Cornwall’ event aims to give participants an update, using publicly-available information, on exploration activities in Cornwall and on the research in Met4Tech that is building future scenarios for sustainable mining in Cornwall. The meeting will give all attendees an opportunity to share ideas and build new collaborations about renewed mining in our county.

Find the full agenda here.

This will be held at the Environment and Sustainability Institute, University of Exeter on Penryn Campus.  It will be a hybrid event and interested participants outside the ESI can join us on MS Teams, if they prefer. Please email esidirector@exeter.ac.uk for the link.

We are proud to be celebrating the ESI’s first decade of successful operation and are holding a series of events to mark #esi10 throughout this academic year.