TMC the metals company Inc. (TMC) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Excellent. Okay I think we will get started just in the interest of time because we've got a full agenda today. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, everyone. Thank you so much for taking the time to join us today. My name is Corey McLachlan. I work with The Metals Company, the owner of Nauru Ocean Resources, Inc., and I'm in charge of our sponsoring state and ISA relationships. If you've joined us in the past, you'll know that we have done our best to share information about our project, the evolving science and data that we are collecting as we move forward with stakeholders. And this is another one of those webinars. I'm very pleased that we do this and we're always interested in your feedback. So you have thoughts on which topics interest to you that you haven't heard us present. If there's areas that you'd like to see more information on, please do let us know because we are sincere in our desire to share information and to give information to you that you're interested in. With that in mind, we've got a great topic today. We've got our Chief Sustainability Officer, my good friend and colleague, Erica Ocampo, who's going to join us today, and she's going to be presenting on the life cycle analysis that was conducted by Benchmark Mineral Intelligence and also provide some insights into a recent complementary study on carbon sinks. So we'll have a great topic today. As usual, before we kick things off, what we like to do is just a short anonymous poll with a couple of questions to let us know who is joining us today. So if you wouldn't mind, Rachel, if you could bring that up. Once again, this is anonymous, so please feel free to answer. It helps us understand who is with us today. And we'll just give everybody a minute to click on those. Excellent. Great. Thanks, everyone. Rachel, maybe you could pull up the results quickly. Good to see some people in Asia and Oceania. Thank you for staying up late or being very early to join us today. We greatly appreciate that. And nice to see an intermediate sort of level of knowledge about this topic, and obviously, some people that need to -- want to learn a little bit more as well. Fantastic. Thank you for taking the time to do that. Before we kick off, it's my pleasure to invite our sponsoring state, the Republic of Nauru to just give a short opening welcome to you, we're going to be joined by the acting CEO of the Nauru Seabed Minerals Authority, who will say a few words before we turn it over to Erica. Francilia, please.

Greetings. Good morning, good evening, good afternoon and to you all depending on where you are joining us from. I welcome as well as I thank you for making the time to join this insightful session where we get to hear about the life cycle assessment. That was a range by our sponsored entity NORI for the NORI-D Nodule projects. For those who are new, Nauru is the sponsoring state for NORI, my name is Francilia Adire and as acting CEO, I report to the Nauru Seabed Minerals Authority. This authority is the regulatory body that oversees our work as well as our partnership or collaboration with NORI to ensure that we are both meeting our obligations under the UNCLOS as well as to the work of the International Seabed Authority. I am excited that we get to hear one of the many, many projects that NORI is working towards achieving. And so I do hope that you find the presentation today not only informative but also engaging. With that said, I thank you for your attention, and I wish you all a happy festive season. Good bye.

Thank you so much, Francilia. Just building a little bit on what Francilia told us about. I thought I would just share a brief overview of Nauru Ocean Resources, Inc., obviously, known as NORI. We're quite proud of the history that NORI has within this industry. We were the first private entity to partner with a developing country, the Republic of Nauru. And together, we were able to secure the first contract with a developing state sponsor that was able to access the Reserve Bank in 2011. We were very pleased to see multiple countries such as [indiscernible], Tonga, Jamaica, [indiscernible] and take this model forward as well. We've had a number of other firsts throughout our history, working closely with our sponsoring state and we expect to be the first contractor to submit an application for a plan of work towards the end of next year. So we've got a strong history in this industry. We consider ourselves leaders. And with that, we see a responsibility to share information broadly about this industry. Now just a couple of other housekeeping items before we move on to Erica. This webinar is being recorded today. We will make it publicly available on our website. You can access all of our former webinars there as well. We encourage and hope you will share questions with us today. [Operator Instructions] Please throughout the presentation and send your questions in. It is our intention to spend 10, 15 minutes at the end, answering those questions, and we'll endeavor to answer as many as we can. We typically get through almost all of them. Those we don't, you can follow up with us. We're happy to answer questions offline as well. Lastly, if you'd like to learn more about our project and see some of the other things we've done, you can go to our website. We'll put that into the chat feature below. So feel free to look at that and follow up on us. And then lastly, we would greatly appreciate if you were able to take the survey that will be sent out immediately following this webinar. It just takes a minute. It helps us understand what's important to you and how we can improve moving forward. So with that, I would like to turn it over to Erica, who is going to take you through the presentation today. But I look forward to joining at the end to facilitate the Q&As. Thank you so much. Over to you, Erica.

Thank you so much, Corey. I'm very glad that I got the opportunity today to chat with all of you. Give me a sec and I'll share my screen. I believe you are able to see it now. Is that correct?

Yes, we can and Erica. It looks great.

Excellent. So hello, everybody. I'm the Chief Sustainability Officer of The Metals Company. I'm a chemical engineer and I hold a Masters in Sustainability and Environmental Management. I have worked all my career in manufacturing industry from like companies like Dow Chemical and Sims Metal Management, the biggest recycler of metals. And I got the opportunity to work closely with Benchmark on the development of this LCA on the carbon sinks where I learned greatly about the impacts. So I would like to share with you the overview of these results but also we have made available the full report provided by Benchmark with every single detail. And if that report doesn't have all the answers to your questions, I'll be happy to try to answer them or connect you directly with Benchmark to do so. So as mentioned today, we're going to be looking at two items: one, the comparative life cycle assessment and second, the terrestrial carbon sink. So let's just start with the comparative life cycle assessment. This life cycle assessment done by Benchmark is a cradle-to-gate LCA. So it covers nodule collection, transportation of nodules to shore and onshore processing and refining. It is important to clarify that this LCA is not the same that the NORI-D environmental impact assessment being done by TMC with the support and collaboration of many scientists because that assessment focuses on the impacts of marine biodiversity and ecosystem functions in the area of the ocean potentially impacted by our future operations. Instead, this LCA covers a broader scope of activities with some other specific metrics, which is the goal of today and which I'm going to be talking to you about today. So let's start with stating the two main goals that we had by engaging Benchmark to do this life cycle assessment. The first one, very important, in particular, to me, as in looking to decarbonize TMC operations was to quantify the environmental impacts of the NORI-D project. And the second is to see how those impacts compared for producing the same metals from conventional land ores using typical processing routes. So when you look at the assumptions, like LCA is basically modeling of potential operations. So when we did the NORI-D model, we assume any scenario with the offshore operations vessels. We're running on marine gas oil as most do. All nodules are process using TMCs near -- sorry, solid waste flow sheet operated with renewable electricity. And we asked Benchmark to assess the impact of this model when having a metallurgical plant in Texas versus India versus Malaysia. And the balance I'm sharing today are the ones for the model done with an onshore facility in Texas. And the offshore and onshore model estimates were provided by DRT and Hatch, respectively. Now for the land-based routes, Benchmark use background data from databases like Ecoinvent and knowledge provided by chemical engineers, experts in the nickel and cobalt industry, the use country representative electricity mixes. And the refining stages were also allocated via economic allocation and when same by-products shown like the ones for the NORI-D nodules, environmental credit was assigned as well. So something very important for this model was that for the pyrometallurgical step in particular, the life cycle inventory done by Benchmark use knowledge and data provided to them of the subprocesses within that step. The reduction of oxides was calculated by TMC through mass balance with basis on testwork and piloting data from analogous commercial operations and thermodynamic fundamentals such as Gibbs free energy curves. And this part of the LCI, the life cycle inventory is named metallurgical demand, and this is particularly important, we're looking at the input coal, which has the main used to reduce oxides for nodules to achieve on-specification, manganese silicate, which is one of our major products and the nickel-copper-cobalt alloy. So when you look at this in total, the reduction step uses about 80% of the total coal input, and the remaining 20% of the coal was grouped with natural gas for heat needs and direct energy demands were used to calculate heat requirements of manganese silicate and the alloy. So the reason why I'm talking about this is because the allocation or the no allocation is one of the methodological choices that can make a life cycle assessment differ from other life cycle assessments. So the choices and the way that things at model are going to make results vary across different LCAs of the same kind of products. But when we make these methodological choices or when Benchmark did them, they were looking at best guidance from ISO standards and from the third-party reviewer. And the reason why we go with metallurgical demand for this pyrometallurgical step is because according to the ISO standard, looking for avoidance of allocation is kind of the best step, if you have knowledge of the subprocesses which we happen to have. So most industrial processes yield more than one product. Therefore, allocation of environmental impact should be attributed to these products fairly, and this is what is referred as the allocation procedure. And for the pyrometallurgical step, we apply the knowledge specific to the metallurgical demand, as I just mentioned, and that's how we avoided this kind of allocation of inputs such as coal, the natural gas and the electricity, the silica flux and the sulfur. But for the remaining inputs such as water and electricity for on-site fleet, mass allocation was used. The part of the nodule collection at the mining step was allocated by mass as the relationship is poorly physical to the volume of manganese silicate and the nickel-cobalt-copper in matte produce and due to the importance of grading the products analyzed in this LCA, the metal content is considered instead of the coal matte. So when we go all the way to the refining step, the hydrometallurgical step, economic allocation was applied due to the significant price variance between the final products, this procedure was deemed the appropriate choice. And lastly, system expansion was adopted by the -- for the by-products, the ammonium sulfate and the converter slag. The converter slag was assumed that could be used as gravel since it doesn't have deleterious materials in it. But we did a sensitivity analysis for those. And you can see on the bottom of this slide, the four sensitivity analysis that we did for four different choices. And a sensitivity analysis help us to investigate the effects of changes in parameters on the inputs and the results, and it help reassure the robustness of the methodology and results. So this sensitivity analysis indicated that the results are sensitive to current allocation like we did metallurgical demand, mass allocation, economic allocation versus using just economic allocation throughout the entire LCA. It also says that it is sensitive to environmental credits, in particular, when you look at marine eutrophication. So instead of having it as a system expansion, you can have it as a core product. So there was some variance there. But the allocation was not sensitive to the location of the onshore production place nor the variation of the metal price because we chose a 10-year average for the metal price versus just having the prices of the 2022 values of those metals. So for the LCA all the categories within ReCiPe 2016 method can be found in the full report. But for the summary report, Benchmark focus on seven impact categories listed here and those ones were deemed by them has critical environmental impacts for the metal industry. In addition to these midpoint impact categories, this LCA also investigated and reported on endpoint categories and Benchmark also carry a waste generation assessment as a supplementary research. So to ensure comparability, the primary purpose of a functional unit is to determine the inputs and outputs that will be included. As the goal of this study is to provide an environmental profile of TMC products, the functional units selected where 1 kilogram of nickel-copper-cobalt containing matte, 1 kilogram of nickel containing nickel sulfate, 1 kilogram of cobalt containing cobalt sulfate and 1 kilogram of copper cathode. So as the graphic shows, during the onshore processing and refining, we start with a nodule, which then goes through a calcination and smelting step. From this pyrometallurgical stage, the manganese silicate leaves the process after being smelted while the alloy continues to sulfidation before granulation. Then this intermediate product, the nickel-copper-cobalt matte goes through further refining via hydrometallurgical processing where the co-products, nickel sulfate, cobalt sulfate, copper cathode are produced and the by-product ammonium sulfate is obtained. So having the results of the LCA allowed us to quantify our potential future impact and identified hotspots in our process. And by having this knowledge now, that means we can focus on improving our impact profile before we start commercial operations. And as seen in this slide, we know that our metallurgical operations will be the main source of our emissions. In particular, the combustion, production and distribution of coal has the biggest drivers behind most impact categories results for all of the TMC NORI-D projects products. The combustion of coal alone contributed to 63% to 65% of the global warming potential of all products we produce. Therefore, the emissions are the major source of our greenhouse gas emissions making the pyrometallurgical stage, the most environmentally impactful stage. And finding alternatives to coal as a reductant is key to decarbonize our operations. And this challenge of replacing coal as a reductant for metallurgical facilities is not exclusive to TMC, but to many other processes that use coal as a reductant. So we're really looking forward of finding a solution for these. In this slide, we are seeing the overall impact of our operations. But now let me take you to take a look on how it translates to each material and how they compare to land-based routes. So the results from the NORI-D project life cycle assessment when compared to Benchmark identify key routes for producing the same metals from conventional land-based ores. The methodological choices have been replicated as accurately as possible to enable comparison and the routes analyzed, which you can see listed here, are directly associated with 93% of global refined nickel production and 86% of global mine coal output for 2022. In this slide is the list of the routes analyzed, Benchmark look for major producing terrestrial routes and also multi-ore routes that could be more closely compared to TMC's nodules. Well, this is like focus on the global warming potential. The model review, the other impact categories that we talk about. And if we look at the carbon emissions per kilogram of nickel in nickel sulfate, we can see how the laterite from Indonesia RKEF route has the highest footprint followed by Caron, DON route, conventional and then laterites via HPAL. And in yellow on the very right of the table, you can see how the footprint for nickel for the NORI-D project compares to those. So I know there is a lot of information on this table, but we highlighted it on yellow to show in yellow the smallest footprint and all those indicators. So those indicators tells us that NORI-D shows -- has the best environmental performance in all seven impact categories among the eight processing routes analyzed, not just global warming potential. And on average, when you look at all the impact categories, it has more than 80% lower emissions than the other routes in five of the seven impact categories such as stratospheric ozone depletion, terrestrial acidification, freshwater eutrophication, marine eutrophication and fine particle matter formation. And on average, it has more than 70% lower emissions in global warming potential and water consumption. So when you look at global warming potential alone, we are looking at a variation between 23% to 94% lower global warming potential than the other processing routes analyzed. So there are many reasons why this is the result. So you can see that in addition to renewable electricity and higher recovery rates, the main reason for NORI-D's project lowers emissions in most impact categories is because the use of sulfuric acid in the MHP and MSP routes is respectively 5 to 6 times higher than that in the NORI-D project. Also NORI-D's projects doesn't have sulfidic tailings, which have proved significantly lower in the freshwater eutrophication emissions and the absence of blasting in the mining stage is another critical contributor to the better performance. So the same kind of data, but let's have it in a more graphic way. Here, you're only looking at the NORI-D project on the right and then on the left, you have the Indonesia laterites process either through RKEF or through HPAL. And you can see in this spider diagram, how they compare in all the impact categories. So it's just the same data being seen in a different graphic. So let's now look at copper. So in copper, we have done route, having the highest impact followed by conventional, followed by DRC. And again, here, we have NORI-D presenting a lower global warming potential than the other routes. And this holds true for all the other impact categories such as marine and freshwater eutrophication and water consumption. So when we look at -- on average, the emissions is more than 55% reduction in global warming potential, more than 64% in terrestrial acidification and more than 43% in water consumption. So that's how much lower the NORI-D project presents. So now let's look at cobalt. So for cobalt, you can see similar to nickel the Indonesian laterite RKEF route has the biggest impact, followed by DON, conventional, then HPAL laterites, but for this, the metal coming from the DRC route has the lowest overall carbon footprint as compared to the others. However, as said for water consumption, cobalt from DRC does not perform better than NORI-D in other impact categories. So I want to note that this LCA is just one of the many science tools that we use to help us quantify and understand from a planetary systems perspective, the trade-offs of various options and how these choices make us a company have an impact overall results. So here, you can see, and I like looking at this cobalt one because it says, oh, okay, DRC route has better global government potential than the NORI-D and also better water consumption, but in the all the other impact categories, NORI-D still outperforms the DRC. So those are kind of the trade-offs and more detailed information that we should be able to look understanding what are the assumptions of the model. And that's one of the reasons that we continue to do additional assessments because all these tools are just tools that allow us to see to this challenge from different angles so that we can have a more science-based informed decision. So I think the cobalt is one of the examples that show us how the caveats of the trade-offs between these options. So I want to stop here with the life cycle assessment. You can find the main summary report and then the full report in our website, we have made it available for everybody to look at. But those are kind of the high-level overview that I wanted to share with you on the life cycle assessment. So now I would like to move to the carbon sink assessment, which we just released last month. So most life cycle assessment quantify the global warming potential derived from the life cycle of producing the metals. But often, that tool is not well suited to quantify the impact that land-use changes have on carbon sinks as a result of mining operations. In particular, when I want to look at specific regions, so we all know that forest are seen as the most critical terrestrial ecosystem in terms of their ability to capture and look at carbon from the atmosphere, and these ecosystems are removed and or degraded as a result of a number of land-use changes and terrestrial mining is one of such activities requiring significant land use. So the removal and degradation of this forest results in a reduction in the carbon accumulation and removal through both the loss of carbon sequestration services as well as the release of carbon health in these carbon stocks. So we know that in 2022, 75% of the world's cobalt production came from the Democratic Republic of Congo, and 50% of the world's nickel production came from Indonesia. So that made it really important for us to understand the impact that extraction of these minerals have under carbons sink. So to quantify carbon impacts of cobalt and nickel mining operations, we engaged Benchmark to conduct this independent analysis. So Benchmark went ahead and identified it, the Katanga region of the DRC and the Sulawesi region of Indonesia as good examples of mining operations in these two world crops producing countries and to quantify how carbon stock changes over time, they look for data on two items. The estimation of the amount of carbon store in the specific forest ecosystem before disturbance and changes. So that means like everything that is within the trees and the soil, and then the changes to the ecosystems capacity to remove CO2 from the atmosphere, which many of you know has carbon sequestration. So they had to calculate things like aboveground biomass, and belowground biomass, the carbon in soil, soil respiration, annual forest growth. So all these have to be assessed to have a more granular view of the impacts that mining has on these forest ecosystems and the carbon they store and sequester. So the study drew on geographical information systems, the GIS analysis to make sure the land-use change within contracted mining areas over time. So there were six main stages to do this calculation. In the first one, Benchmark identify Katanga and Sulawesi as the two main regions they wanted to review. From each of these regions, they identify five of the largest mines and in each region and the [ cold in case ] study mines. The second step is that the map -- this case study map -- mines using Landstar and Sentinel-2 GIS, and they made this mapping like throughout time. So they look at the mines in 2008, 2014 and 2022. And then using Land Cover Classification System in the DRC and using the two natural ecosystems in Indonesia, rainforest and mangroves, they kind we're able to assess to map the habitat types that were in these regions. The third step that we took was using peer review data to understand the biomass information or data from the Miombo woodlands in Katanga and the rainforest and mangrove in Sulawesi. The fourth step is that they identify a specific allometric equations, analytic equations to be able to calculate total living biomass. And then the fifth step was the carbon stocks and carbon flows in the regions due to land-use change in this starting area with modular throughout, the 14-year interval that these mines will assess. And then with information that Benchmark has in relation to ore grades and volume estimates, they use that database to be able to relate that carbon stock and sequestration and how that would relate to 1 kilogram of nickel or 1 kilogram of cobalt. So those things were put together. So here is a summary of the results for the cobalt. So obviously, there is a negative change of the carbon sinks when we are mining cobalt in Katanga region. The four major areas that we'd look to get to these numbers were the estimated cobalt produced per year per average mine in this region, the average area of vegetation change during the 14 years and then creating to a yearly basis, then the land use intensity, which is the square meters per kilogram of cobalt that is produced then the carbon impact on land-use change were part of the calculations that were used through the different equations that were selected by Benchmark. So I'll move to nickel, it has a similar summary page, but then I'll have like the key numbers in a summary of both of them. But what is important here to understand and what is relevant to see is these two numbers when we look at carbon stock is impacted by 3.61 kilograms of CO2 equivalent per kilogram of cobalt. That's a relevant number and then the amount of carbon sequestration reduction, which is 9.32 grams of CO2 equivalent per kilogram of cobalt per year because this is a sequestration service. So these numbers, we want to share them for full transparency, obviously, in all mines around the world aren't the same. The production numbers are not the same. The area numbers are not the same. But these were the estimates that were provided by Benchmark experts then the average area was the GIS data collected and the land use intensity and carbon impacts were the ones calculated. So for nickel, we have -- the same process was applied. Obviously, we have different results for that one. For nickel, we look at limonite process through HPAL and then saprolite process through RKEF because obviously, the ore grades and the recovery rates are different for those ones, so we needed to apply that. And here, you also have the information provided by Benchmark in terms of ore grade and in global recovery, we have the GIS data collected in terms of area -- total area and area change and the results of the calculations or the biomass and carbon stock loss and carbon sequestration services loss. So here is the table that you're going to find in the summary report. Obviously, the extraction of metal ores through open cave mine requires complete removal of overlaying ecosystems and contain carbon sinks, and the removal of these carbon sinks also eliminates the carbon sequestration services that these ecosystems provide. So the numbers that we're looking for cobalt are, we mentioned them before, the carbon stock loss per kilogram of cobalt is 3.6; and for nickel is 9.4 for limonite and 7 for saprolite. There were some interesting factors that were learned through this process, such as the Katanga region and DRC host more than 70% of the Miombo woodland in this area. And in Sulawesi, which is a tropical moist lowland rainforest, the diversity of forest ecosystem is part of the reason for the island's high rate of endemism and biodiversity. And obviously, this all kind of impacts will require a different type of assessment, but it's just an indicator of the additional things that we should be -- the additional impact that we should be looking at. So since there wasn't ready a study -- peer review paper on climate change impacts of deep sink nodules because I'm pretty sure you're going to say, okay, well, you look at nickel in Indonesia, you look at cobalt DRC, what about nodules. So Benchmark did not have the tools to be able to do that assessment about nodules. But there was a peer review of paper on climate change impacts of deep sea nodules published in the Journal of Cleaner Production in December of 2020. And they have an estimation of this deep sea nodule collection project will result what is the potential result of carbon loss. So while the paper concluded that there are no known mechanisms for carbon containing the sediments at this depth, we're talking 4,000 meters deep to be released to the atmosphere. Just for the purpose of this comparison, we look kind of a worst case scenario and the potential release of previously sequester carbon array -- arising from coal, pressurized seawater being pumped to the surplus is including these analysis. So in that potential, we will have a potential loss of carbon stock of 0.00011 kilograms of CO2 per kilogram of nickel and 0.00014 kilograms of CO2 per kilogram of cobalt. And this is mainly because while oceans are the largest carbon sink, the sea floor's sediment is still less than 0.4% of the oceanic carbon. And because it's so deep and the cycles of the ocean takes so long, that's just really -- there has been besides this paper that we have referenced this values to, there have been other analysis where they just haven't been able to find a way in which the carbon in sediments will make it to the atmosphere. So we look at these numbers for the NORI-D project. This -- you can see all the values that were used to make the conclusion of these two values. And we said, okay, let's assume that's the value of the carbon stock release and let's compared with the carbon stock release that Benchmarks just did for us. And here, you have the summary of those two values. So the two values from nickel that I mentioned and from cobalt and then the two values from the NORI-D project? And what if on top of that, then we use the LCA global warming potential and add these carbon stocks to the global warming potential. This is not conventional. This is just a way for us to have a view of what it could mean and the impact that it could have. So this is how material are impact in carbon stocks and sequestration services in the mining phase, in the context of the overall life cycle assessment. We have the global warming potential that looks at mining, transport, processing and refining, and then you have the carbon stocks that are removed during mining. So here, you have the view of the summary report that we included. This view on the summary report, just kind of to show you what it could be. And you can find more information about this report in our website. And here, we're also listing the paper from the Journal of Cleaner Production that we use to assess the potential loss of carbon stocks from nodule removal. So that's all I have for everybody, which gives us a healthy time for us to go into questions. So Corey, please, if you tell me what people have been asking, I'd be happy to address those questions.

Excellent. Thank you so much, Erica. Really appreciate you taking the time to go through that. So we do have a number of questions that are coming in. So what I will do is I'll paraphrase, I'll try to read them as closely as possible. So Erica, maybe just let me pull up the first question here. This one is from Adrian. They are asking comparisons with land-based production is obviously relevant and very important, but to avoid criticism of cherry-picking comparatives, is there sufficiently granular data available to compare the NORI-D metrics with the very best individual land-based producers. They're also asking in the future, they see mines working harder and harder to reduce their environmental impact. So just trying to understand, I guess, how these compare to the best mines and maybe projecting a little bit forward, if you could.

Yes. No. That's a great question and one that I asked Benchmark actually as we were drafting the proposal. And unfortunately, that kind of information -- they haven't had access to that information. So best mines are not openly sharing yet that information, but we are really after that because -- and that's the reason why we decided to do many routes -- processing routes, just because we didn't have access to individual projects because I completely agree when you look at the impact, we should be looking project versus project, but for terrestrial mines, we don't have that yet. But we were able to find average per routes that today is kind of like the best average because we are showing you the worst route which happens, for example, for nickel, the worst route RKEF, it happens to be the majority of production today versus the best route, right? And so you can kind of see where the numbers will fall even for the best of those plants. This production routes or projects. So yes, if there is access to that information, that will be my next iteration of LCA. So hopefully, at some point, companies start releasing more of that information like we're doing for the NORI-D project. But until then, we can just show the best -- that we have been able to do is to show an average of very specific route.

Thanks, Erica. And I guess you did mention that we do cover the majority of production today that is existing, right? So that would, in theory, cover the best of the best, but also some of the lower end of mines as well.

Yes, absolutely. And I know it's not going to give you the straight number for the best mine, right? But it gives you an indication of the range where that best mine will pull.

Great. We have a more general question, Erica, not necessarily specifically on your topic. So I'll read it out and I'll answer that one and then we'll come back to you in just a minute. The questions from Eric is, asking -- he's asking, what type of data still needs to be collected related to NORI's future application. Have we received any specific requests or feedback from stakeholder groups is the question for us. So Eric, in response to that, we are in the final stages of collecting the data needed to submit our plan of work for the application. We're actually currently at sea right now collecting the last bit of our environmental baseline data. We were requested to go back 12 months after our test mining and to look at how the ecosystem had responded and was beginning to recover. So that will be the last component of our environmental baseline studies that we need to do, and that will then feed into the application. I'm also able to share that a number of components of our application are close or nearly complete. And so we do remain on target to release that and submit it next year to the ISA in the latter half of 2024. In terms of feedback, we've received quite a bit of feedback from various components of our application. We received feedback on the EIS prior to our collector test last year. We've received feedback on our social impact assessments, inception report as well. And also through these webinars and other engagements through we receive feedback. And then lastly, Eric, just to answer, how do we -- we get a lot of questions and it sort of implied from your question, is, how do you prepare an application when the regulations are not yet complete. What we do is we engage with stakeholders. We track closely the development of the regulations to ensure that our application is compliant and leading in areas where there are discussions. So hopefully, that helps you with your question. Erica, the next one for you. We have coming in from Andy. He's asking about the carbon sink assessment and noting that it looks like laterite nickel mining was the most impactful. And noting that the carbon sink assessment only looked at laterite mining in tropical forest and is asking why the impact of Canadian sulfide mining was not included as a comparison as well?

Yes, that's a good question. Well, the main reason that it wasn't included is because we're focused on the top producing nickel and cobalt producers, respectively. So knowing that Indonesia is responsible for over 50% of the global production in 2022 and double just in that year, and it will continue to increase to over 20 -- 70%, it seems quite much relevant by the Canadian sulfide. But it doesn't mean that we don't care about them. It just means that this process, this assessment, this GIS modeling is quite challenging and finding the set of expertise and data wasn't an easy piece. So this is our approach to doing this carbon sink assessment, but it's not our last. As I mentioned before, we just continue to look for different science tools that allowed us to look at the challenge from different angles. And that's what we're doing. So we tackle first the ones that are more relevant to the global production and thus nickel laterites in Indonesia.

Fantastic. Thanks, Erica. The next question we have is from Jack. This one is a bit more general. So maybe, Erica, I'll start and if you'd like to add anything you can. Jack is asking, how would we respond to the environmental concerns raised by Greenpeace regarding the potential harm to deep-sea mining than what it could cause to the surrounding ecosystem? And then asked what mitigation tactics could be employed to limit the environmental harms? So thanks for the question, Jack. I might suggest that the first place you start with this question would be to look at our recently recorded webinar and the preliminary results that we've recently put out regarding the benthic plumes. And benthic means the plumes at the sea floor. And what our preliminary data is showing is that those plumes do not travel very far. Contrary to some of the models that were produced and some of the narratives in the media today, our preliminary results, which is backed by infield data and supplemented by data that's been collected by their contractors shows that this plumes travels hundreds of kilometers -- hundreds of meters, sorry, not the hundreds of kilometers that sometimes gets used in the media. And so what we can say and what we will propose in our application is that the impact to the ecosystem will be much more direct and close to the mining area than had previously been thought. And that allows you to clearly define areas of impact and areas of influence. And so that will be a great way for the regulator to look at what those areas of impact are and be able to determine if they believe an application should go forward. In terms of mitigation, we're doing a number of things. So knowing and understanding the plume dynamics allows us to put buffer zones around sensitive ecosystems and sensitive areas, which is one area. The other thing we're doing from an engineering perspective is we learned a lot from the collector test that was done last year. And our partners at Allseas are looking at those results to minimize the collection of the sea floor that's disturbed during the collection of nodules, looking to redesign aspects of the collector to sort of facilitate the flocculation of the plume. So there's a number of things that we're looking at to mitigate those impacts. And that's the exact reason that we did that test was to ensure that we could identify areas for further mitigation. So thank you, Jack, for that question.

And I'd like to that, Corey. I can understand the concerns raised by Greenpeace, right? Like when you talk about the ocean and mining, our first cognitive dissonance tells us, oh gosh. But our role as global citizens and those of us in science is to go beyond that and pass that initial fear and look at the information because see what the options we have at hand to address this global challenge of the supply of these metals for the energy transition. So while I can understand their fear because it's a natural thing to have, I encourage them and everybody to be curious, to be brave and to look at the data instead of just those conjectures. Because the information we are gathering is telling us a very different story and is allowing us to understand the best way that we can mitigate impacts and how those impacts are actually significantly lower to our current practices on land-based routes.

Thank you, Erica. Very well said and excellent supplemental point. Thank you. We've got a number of other questions. Let's keep moving through. Andy asks a second question, Erica. It's in regard to marine waste generation. And he's noting that, that's presented in the data and is only relevant for nodules. Therefore, it doesn't -- sorry, I just lost therefore, it doesn't seem to show up against other comparisons. So effectively, it is hidden. Would it not be better to compare it to land-based waste generation rather than keep it as a separate category?

Yes. We had that question and that discussion. And the truth is that both of them are different, right? So the waste generated in terrestrial covers tailings, mining waste, things that have to be like manage indefinitely and put into these dams. When it comes to where -- it was calculated by Benchmark has marine waste, they were talking about sediments and sediments we settle back into the sea floor. So there are no consider waste. And so we couldn't like really match them the same way. And we thought that the most transparent way to present them was to show what it was, this terrestrial waste, which we are now generating versus what we coin marine waste, which is basically the sediments that will be returned and resettle in the sea floor. So by nature, they are different. We didn't see that has fair comparisons and that's why we presented them separately.

Thanks, Erica. And thanks for those questions. We have another question from Fiona asking; is TMC/NORI collecting the environmental baseline data itself? Or are there any independent third parties involved?

Well, that one -- it covers more about environmental impact assessment, and we have plenty of third parties involved because the expertise is usually held by people outside. When it comes specifically to this life cycle assessment, the information was provided by our operation plan, so like the TMC process flow sheet and that information comes from the design -- the flow sheet designed by Hatch and the pilot testing done with them and others. And then DRT engineering were the ones calculating the marine gas oil and all the miles that were used by vessels offshore by the specific operations we were more around NORI-D. So all of them are third parties.

Yes. Excellent. And just to supplement that, as Erica has mentioned, we have a suite of independent scientists, research institutions that are collecting a lot of the environmental baseline data. What's important to note is those scientists that work with us, they have the freedom to publish. And so you will be seeing a significant number of peer-reviewed scientific papers coming out as they finish analyzing this data. So we're very proud to be working with credible leading scientists that are doing this work for us, and we encourage and support their research. I have a question from Steve that's a little bit broader. So again, Erica, maybe I'll start, and you can supplement it. The question is during mining, what assessment or measurement activities are planned to compare the impact of protected areas with the mined areas? In essence, this would amount to ongoing comparisons is the question. Steve, you're absolutely right. We will be and we have set aside control areas, and that is to be able to monitor areas that will not be impacted by mining. And so that will be ongoing. Part of the application process and part of the requirement for a contractor such as NORI, is to develop an environmental management and monitoring plan that will be reviewed by the ISA. And one of those key components is to be able to study both ongoing impacts that are happening and to study these control environments. So you can see what the difference is. So that will happen, that will occur. And in fact, that's occurring right now. That's part of the work that we're doing on the water right now. We're looking at a control area that was 5 kilometers away from the test mining site. And looking at how it is responding or how it is currently versus the impacted area from the test mining. So yes, great question. Erica, is there anything you wanted to add on that before I move on to the next one?

No, at this -- when it comes to the terrestrial mining a point that was done before was how more terrestrial miners are going to continue to improve the performance. I really hope that's true. My concern will be that with the rapid increase of production in those regions with limited ability to govern that at the speed that is growing might be limited. But if indeed, that would be happening, I really hope that we are able to access more information individual projects in terrestrial mining, so that we can do more and more granular comparison, which ultimately is what we want.

Great. Well, we've got one other question. So the timing is perfect. We should be ending right on time. This question is from Keith. Now Keith, my apologies. I'm just -- I'm looking at the two questions you've asked here. So -- and I see that they're combined. The question, Erica, is will not collecting nodules eventually lead to a reduction in electric vehicles on the road. And if yes, can you quantify the impact of the increased number of ICE vehicles on the road. In essence, what is the impact of doing nothing. So it might be a little bit hard to answer specifically, but I think you can give the point.

I think the only way I can think of even getting to this assessment is looking at the projections of the supply gap that will not allow X amount of electric vehicles not to be produced because there's not enough metals for the batteries to be produced. So I guess, if we get there, assuming, I don't know, we can have like three different models of different projections to know what will be the supply gap. We could potentially get there and then just assume that, that supply gap is going to be then replaced by ICEs, again, which then would take us to the whole regulatory environment because there are so many commitments globally to move to electrification, right? So assuming we ignore that and we just replace the production gap, I think it's like by [ 2030, 6 million ] vehicles. I've seen some graphs about what would be the amount of vehicles that will not be able -- electric vehicles that cannot be built because there's not enough material. But yes, I guess, potentially that can happen, that can be assessed. But again, it will be just an estimation.

Excellent. Thanks, Erica, again. And that brings us to the end of the webinar and the end of the questions asked. So the timing, again, worked perfectly today. Thank you to everybody who joined us. Thank you to the questions that came in. Just as a reminder, we will post this video online on our website, Rachel has been kind enough to put that into the chat. If you have any feedback or questions from us, please do share, as I mentioned earlier, we're very keen to receive that feedback and get ideas for what areas you'd find interesting for us to present on in the future. And then lastly, before I let you get on with your day. Just a reminder, there will be a very brief survey at the end of this, if you wouldn't mind taking a minute, it's extremely helpful and informative to us. So with that, thanks again for joining us. Please tune back in, take a look at our feeds in early 2024. We'll be [indiscernible] [ riding ] an update on future webinars. And I'm wishing everybody a happy holiday season that's coming up. Thanks again.

Thanks, everybody. Bye-bye.