Mining’s Next Bottleneck Isn’t the Market. It’s the Grid.

^{Image Credit: Legacy sites like Stobie Mine reflect how future operations will need far more power to electrify and scale. (Photo: Concrete Pictures Inc.)}

Mining is ramping up across Canada. New projects are being announced monthly. Existing sites are expanding. Demand for critical minerals is pushing production to new heights. But there’s a problem creeping in that’s not getting enough attention, and it has nothing to do with commodity prices, policy, or permitting.

It’s energy.

Specifically: Can the grid handle the mines we’re planning to build?

Right now, a typical mining operation draws around 40 MW for core operations. That’s a baseline most utilities can plan around. But that number is about to become meaningless as electrification takes hold, particularly in the vehicle fleet.

Diesel haul trucks don’t stay diesel forever. Electrifying them is no longer an experimental idea but a financial and reputational necessity. One electric haul truck can draw 4 MW. Multiply that by 20 trucks and suddenly, your mine’s load requirement jumps from 40 MW to 120 MW. That’s a tripling of energy demand, and it’s not 20 years away. It’s this decade. Some would say sooner.

Why Mines Need to Act on This Now

Mines that don’t get ahead of this are going to find themselves bottlenecked not by approvals or workforce shortages, but by transformers, substations, and grid access.

And here’s what most don’t realize until they’re mid-project: you don’t get to just plug in 80 new megawatts. The infrastructure required to support electrified fleets takes years to plan, permit, and build. If your site is already pulling maximum load, there’s no quick fix.

Meanwhile, if you’re trying to meet investor expectations, win long-term offtake agreements, or secure sustainable financing, it’s not enough to say “we plan to electrify.” You’ll need to prove that the energy will actually be there. You’ll need data to show that your future-state energy requirements are not only modelled but also secured. You’ll need a strategy that aligns procurement, reporting, and infrastructure timelines.

The Real Reason This Matters: Competitiveness

Too many people still treat this conversation as an environmental compliance issue. It’s not. It’s a cost, efficiency, and operational continuity issue.

Electrification will not only lower emissions but lead to more stable operating cost over time, less volatility exposure, and less dependence on diesel procurement and transport. But none of that’s achievable without real planning that integrates fleet timelines, utility data, site audits, and regulatory milestones.

If your competitors are electrifying and reducing their cost-per-ton while you’re stuck waiting on a line upgrade, the consequences aren’t theoretical. They’re financial.

And from the outside? The market isn’t going to accept “we couldn’t get the power” as a reason for delay.

What Smart Operators Are Doing

The operators who are taking this seriously are:

• Quantify the full impact of electrification, including trucks and supporting systems
• Bring in energy experts early to model site-wide demand scenarios
• Collect, analyze, and report monthly utility invoices to provide site-level visibility and support executive-level decision making
• Engage with utilities before the load changes, not after
• Build corporate-wide visibility into energy performance to keep leadership aligned
• Design infrastructure with enough flexibility to scale without needing a rebuild every few years

In other words: they’re not waiting for energy to become a problem. They’re treating it as a lever.

Don’t Just Transition, Compete

The mining sector is going to be one of the most visible arenas for the energy transition, whether companies are ready or not. Between regulatory pressure, customer expectations, and capital markets demanding proof of action, the time to prepare isn’t later. It’s now.

And yes, this takes more than tech or dashboards. It takes process. It takes accurate data, informed planning, and people who know how to work across both operations and energy systems.

Because when trucks show up and the grid’s not ready? That’s not a sustainability problem. That’s a shutdown problem.

Want to benchmark where your mine stands or needs to get to? This is what we do. Start with your energy data. Make it accurate. Then build everything else around it.

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