MoU for long-term carbon-free renewable energy

Our European battery metals Investment Euro Manganese (ASX: EMN) has taken steps to secure long-term supply of carbon-free renewable energy for its Chvaletice Manganese Project in the Czech Republic.

EMN today announced that it has signed a non-binding Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Statkraft, a Norwegian state-owned company and Europe’s largest generator of renewable energy.

The MoU — which EMN intends to progress towards a definitive, long-term power purchase agreement — is the result of the company’s work over the past year to establish long-term power pricing forecasts and secure long term, economically viable, green energy for its project.

It lays the foundation for Statkraft to support the net-zero ambitions for EMN’s proposed processing plant to provide carbon-free power to the project.

EMN expects power supply to commence between 2026 and 2027, in line with current estimates around constructing and commissioning the project.

So while EMN is still some way off from potential production, agreements such as this are important in demonstrating the company’s commitment to a zero carbon operation.

EMN recently released its Life Cycle Assessment results, which confirmed the environmental credentials of the proposed manganese project. The LCA highlighted the net benefit of sourcing carbon-free power sources which alone would cut the project’s net global warming potential by half.

We see this as an important part of EMN’s work to position itself as Europe’s premier ESG friendly high purity manganese supplier.

What’s next for EMN? We’re looking forward to future updates on product qualification initiatives following the commissioning of the Demonstration Plant in the Czech Republic. The two modules of the Demonstration Plant finally made it to EMN’s site earlier in the month.