Fossil Free Careers Campaign Targets

Who are the targets?

People & Planet's Fossil Free Careers campaign takes aim at the oil, gas, and mining industry as a whole.

Although people often think of the mining industry and the fossil fuel industry as separate, the terrible social and environmental costs of their operations are similar. Both industries are involved in the violent displacement of entire communities, and the poisoning of land, water and air in the surrounding area.

We should understand fossil fuel extraction as one part of a broader, global economic system of extraction and exploitation, called extractivism. As the pressure ramps up on the fossil fuel industry, mining giants are increasingly looking to dodge accountability and keep this unjust system of extractivism in place by shifting their operations, moving from mining coal to mining the raw materials required for renewable energy instead - known as ‘transition minerals’.

To tackle the system at its root, we are therefore targeting recruitment into the fossil fuel industry and the transition mineral mining industry, addressing the injustice of our energy system as a whole.

Transition Minerals

‘Transition minerals’, are the minerals that are vital to the technology of low-carbon energy systems, particularly extracting, storing and transmitting renewable energy. They include: Cobalt, Lithium, Nickel, Copper, Bauxite, Gold, Graphite, Iron, Silver, Tin, Tantalum, Tungsten, Zinc, and the 17 rare earth elements. Lithium, to take one example, is an essential component of electric vehicle batteries: if we were to simply replace the massive number of petrol-powered cars with electric ones, that would drive a huge spike in the demand for lithium.

Which companies?

Working with researchers and activists in the London Mining Network Just Transition Working Group, we have developed a list of the campaign targets, the list of companies that, as a minimum, must be excluded as part of a compliant policy. Any policy that complies with the demands of the Fossil Free Careers campaign must exclude these companies from recruitment relationships. Alternative exclusion lists are welcome as long as they include all the companies on this list.

The fossil fuel divestment movement has extensively used a list of top 200 fossil fuel reserves owners compiled by Fossil Free Indexes, known as the Carbon Underground 200. To this list of the top 200 fossil fuel companies, we have added the top 50 transition mineral mining companies. Together, this list of 250 companies covers the key players in the extractive industries.

To build this list of the top 50 transition mineral mining companies, available below, we identified the 50 largest, publicly-traded transition mineral mining companies which are implicated in an active case on Environmental Justice Atlas and not already listed in the Carbon Underground 200. Environmental Justice Atlas is a global project which documents and catalogues social conflict around environmental issues. You can read more about our methodology and download a copy of the list below.

We have developed an alternative exclusion list, due to some institutions reporting issues accessing the Carbon Underground 200. Please use the contact form to request a copy of this.

Read the Methodology

Mining Top 50

The Transition Mineral Mining 50 is the 50 largest, publicly-traded transition mineral mining companies which are implicated in an active case on Environmental Justice Atlas.

Name	Market Cap (USD$MIL on 14/06/21)
Rio Tinto Ltd	139,526.85
Southern Copper Corp	60,309.82
Freeport McMoRan	57,859.00
Norilsk	57,664.48
Newmont	55,945.00
Schlumberger N.V.	47,613.14
Zijin Mining	42,587.56
Barrick Gold Corp	41,078.34
Grupo Mexico	36,347.00
Polyus	29,141.64
POSCO	23,310.91
Antofagasta	21,756.95
Wheaton Precious Metals	21,636.83
Albemarle Corporation	19,648.98
Newcrest	17,815.74
China Minmetals Corporation	16,940.00
First Quantum Minerals	16,034.74
Alrosa	13,905.92
Sibanye Stillwater	13,424.00
Norsk Hydro	13,386.17
Aluminum Corporation of China Limited	13,293.44
Sociedad Quimica Y Minera De Chile	12,422.63
Companhia Siderurgica Nacional S.A.	12,374.36
Hindalco	12,033.85
Boliden	11,387.42
Jiangxi Copper	11,010.00
KGHM Polska Miedz	10,657.89
Kinross Gold Corp	9,782.67
Gold Fields	9,285.45
Anglo Gold Ashanti	8,812.81
Ivanhoe Mines	8,721.98
Ternium S.A. Ternium S.A.	7,269.28
First Majestic Silver Corp.	6,961.29
Alcoa	6,899.49
Pan American Silver	6,640.22
Jindal Group Ltd.	5,925.98
B2Gold Corp.	5,213.59
UNITED STATES STEEL CORP	5,116.00
Yamana Gold Inc.	4,926.00
SSR Mining Inc.	3,945.24
Alamos Gold Inc.	3,453.32
Turquoise Hill Resources Ltd.	3,428.30
Coeur Mining Inc.	2,756.22
Harmony Gold Mining Company Limited	2,731.74
Buenaventura Mining Company Inc.	2,710.04
Livent Corporation	2,691.76
Centerra Gold Inc.	2,412.12
MAG Silver Corp.	2,256.91
Eldorado Gold Corporation	2,111.00
Jinchuan	1,851.91

Targets and Methodology

The list of the top 50 Transition Mineral Miners (TMM50) details the 50 largest publicly-traded transition mineral mining companies, ranked by market capitalisation, which are implicated in an active case on Environmental Justice Atlas, and not already listed in the Carbon Underground 200 (CU200), as of June 2021. The CU200 is a list of the top 200 publicly-owned oil, gas, and coal reserve owners. Request a copy of the CU200.

This document is therefore intended as an addition to the CU200, which acts as a minimum for fossil fuel company exclusion. Please note, however, that the authors of the CU200, FFI Solutions, had no input into the production of this list, and that all queries should instead be directed to fossilfreecareers@peopleandplanet.org.

Selection Criteria

To merit inclusion on the TMM50, a company has to satisfy all of the following criteria:

It must be a publicly traded company. This restriction allows for consistency with the CU200 list, ensures that a company’s operations are transparent enough that we can assess whether they mine transition minerals, and allows us to use the standard measure of Market Capitalization to rank companies by size (Read more about Market Capitalization).
It must mine transition minerals. We define Transition Minerals to be the minerals listed as the Conflict and Transition Minerals in Annex 1 of the War on Want report ‘A Material Transition: Exploring supply and demand solutions for renewable energy minerals.' They comprise of the following: cobalt, lithium, nickel, copper, bauxite, gold, graphite, iron silver, tin, tantalum, tungsten, zinc and the 17 rare earth elements. We consider a company to be a transition mineral miner if the company, or one of its subsidiaries, owns in full or in part a mine that extracts one of the above minerals.
It must be registered in a conflict on EJAtlas. The EJAtlas documents ongoing and historic social conflicts that arise from environmental issues. In order to ensure that this list is targeted against known perpetrators of environmental injustice, we have restricted it to only include companies which are implicated in a case on EJAtlas.

Data collection

Financial data was collected from YahooFinance via the YahooFinance python API and from the YahooFinance website. Additional data was collected from the Toronto Stock Exchange website.

Information on mining operations was gathered from annual reports, corporate websites, and SEC Mine Safety Disclosures.

Information on EJAtlas cases were gathered directly from the EJAtlas website.

If you have any questions or queries, please do get in touch at: fossilfreecareers@peopleandplanet.org