To explain the characteristics of this transition, Subai Erakuntza has commissioned a report to the geologist Antonio Aretxabala on the new historical context of the energy and global transition of mining in Navarra and presented it this Thursday in the Katakrak Hall in Pamplona. The report is aimed at the Navarre mining industry, but the historical context described is also valid for the whole of the Spanish State or the European productive fabric. It is mainly based on the 17 Sustainable Development Goals and the EU opinion SC/048 on new economies. These were presented to Navarre society in November 2019 with proposals for energy transition and new economic and industrial models.

Martin Zelaia of Subai Erakuntza and Antonio Aretxabala, the author of the report, were present at the hearing. The report goes back to the history of mining in Navarre, "key to sharing an updated diagnosis of the future of the mining sector". As they stressed, "we have left behind a time when global economic activity is growing continuously and dynamically and is also reduced to mining, despite the fact that demand for many new farms will grow in new green technologies".

An unprecedented crisis

Aretxabala made a clear statement: "Twenty-one. In the first two decades of the 20th century, a new way of relating to geological products emerged, based on financial speculation and short profits. This dynamic has already spread to the mining community of Navarra. This way of acting facilitates the creation and outbreak of unwanted bubbles, firstly because they lead to recession, poverty and, furthermore, because they are caused by the crisis. Today we are witnessing the beginning of a new wave of unprecedented historical crises. The COVID-19 pandemic is nothing more than a catalyst for a decay and it was announced with very clear signals, although, consciously or unconsciously, in most cases nothing like this had been seen."

In this context, the report analyzes the major routes and challenges that will be presented to overcome the impact of the contraction, and in the light of these possibilities, it analyzes the projects being processed, such as the extensions of Magnesitas Navarras, the exploitation of potas, the exploitation of aggregates for public works and construction and the projects for the extraction of hydrocarbons.

Reducing energy consumption and increasing the economy? That is not possible.

Aretxabala also referred to the risk of "going unnoticed" in the institutions and recalled that the Government of Navarra presented the Green Deal roadmap, known as "Green Growth in Scientific Circles". In his view, "the differentiated economic growth of the consumption of raw materials and minerals lacks an empirical basis; it is virtually impossible to save energy with the expected efficiency and automation without a radical change in social organization. If the objective is to decouple consumption from the economy and from resources, then the objective is an economic downturn, which yes or no will occur, for geological, physical and biological reasons, because so far too much has been exploited, and not because of the goodwill of companies or political groups". "If you want to grow," the geologist continues, you need to increase the consumption of resources and, above all, energy, but that must be done when the rates of energy return are in an irreversible decay." In other words, in order to generate a certain amount of energy, today we must use much more energy than then.

The report points out that "society can improve welfare in a sustainable way, without increasing Gross Domestic Product, because from the point of view of Sustainable Development it is not representative of welfare". Aretxabala says that now our goal is to overcome an economic dynamic and that the current model is in a paradox: "If it does not grow it does not work and if it grows it destroys the natural bases that allow it. The mining of Navarre will develop in this historical context, in which a sensitivity is occurring that is affecting the whole of society".