Rio Tinto signs up to power Pilbara iron ore operations with 80MW solar farm

Mining giant Rio Tinto has signed another solar deal with another Pilbara Indigenous group, as it slowly replaces gas power with renewables. 

The deal with the Ngarluma Aboriginal Corporation (NAC) will allow an 80 megawatt (MW) solar farm be built next to Rio Tinto’s existing Yurralyi Maya Power Station, near Karratha.

The solar farm will provide sustainable revenues and increase contracting opportunities for NAC as well as having a positive environmental impact on the area, says NAC CEO Ljuba Mojovic.

“We’re fortunate to embark on our first renewable energy project with Rio Tinto to reduce emissions and to create economic opportunities for the Ngarluma People,” she said. 

A feasibility study is expected to be completed in early 2025, with commissioning in 2027.

This may be the first project Rio Tinto has signed with NAC, but it’s not the first for the Indigenous group. 

In 2022, NAC signed an agreement with oil and gas giant Woodside Energy to build the first stage of a 500MW solar project in the Pilbara, a 50MW solar farm in Maitland, 15 km southwest of Karratha.

Woodside secured Western Australia approvals for the full $300 million project in late 2023, which also includes a plan to install up to 2 gigawatt hours (GWh) of battery storage. However, the nod came with strict conditions around waste and land disturbance,   

Rio races to displace gas

The power from the solar farm on NAC land will supply Rio Tinto’s iron ore operations in the Pilbara, and potentially displace up to 11 per cent of natural gas currently used for electricity generation across all of the miner’s operations in the region. 

However, the company will need 600-700 MW of renewable energy by 2030 if it wants to displace most of its gas use from four gas-fired power stations in the Pilbara. 

And that is before accounting for fleet electrification by the same deadline, the company says. 

It also has a budget of $7.5 billion to reduce Scope 1 and Scope 3 emissions by 50 per cent by 2030 across its global operations. 

With that in mind, in October 2023, Rio Tinto signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Yindjibarndi Energy Corporation (YEC) to explore wind, solar and battery energy storage systems on the Indigenous group’s land. 

YEC wants to develop some 750MW of renewables on land where it holds  exclusive possession, the strongest form of native rights, and partnered with Philippines renewables developer Acen Corporation to do so. 

Rio Tinto, meanwhile, is also still dealing with the fallout from its destruction of two shelters in the Juukan Gorge on the lands of the Puutu Kunti Kurrama and Pinikura people in 2021, and damage caused last year to a rock shelter from a blast at its Nammuldi operations.