BHP DAC Initiatives for 2025: Key Projects, Strategies and Partnerships

From Waste to Asset: Analyzing BHP’s Carbon Mineralization Strategy

Industry Adoption: From Exploration to Focused Application

Between 2021 and 2024, BHP’s approach to carbon capture was characterized by broad exploration across its value chain. The company established partnerships to test point-source capture in hard-to-abate sectors like steelmaking, exemplified by trials with ArcelorMittal in Belgium and HBIS Group in China. Concurrently, it initiated a pioneering move into direct air capture (DAC) through carbon mineralization, launching an 18-month pilot with Arca Climate Technologies to use mine tailings as a carbon sink. This early period was defined by a portfolio approach, investigating various technologies (CCUS, DAC) and applications without a single dominant strategy, reflecting an industry-wide search for viable decarbonization pathways.

Beginning in 2025, a significant inflection point emerged. BHP’s strategy shifted from broad exploration to a more focused validation and acceleration of promising technologies, particularly carbon mineralization. The initial Arca pilot at the Mount Keith mine transitioned into a more concrete phase, drawing in a new partner, Wyloo, and attracting substantial new funding for Arca. This demonstrates a clear signal of confidence in the air-to-rock technology. While still supporting point-source capture, as seen with Carbon Clean’s new Innovation Centre in India, the sharpened focus on turning mining liabilities (tailings) into environmental assets (carbon sinks) represents a strategic pivot. This move from testing feasibility to funding technology acceleration indicates that carbon mineralization is graduating from a conceptual venture to a core component of BHP’s long-term sustainability and operational strategy.

Investment: Funding the Transition from Pilot to Scale

BHP’s financial commitments to decarbonization have evolved from broad programs to targeted investments in specific carbon capture technologies. The cornerstone is its US$400 million Climate Investment Program, which underpins major partnerships. Initially, this translated into project-specific funding, such as the US$15 million allocated for the CCU pilot with China’s HBIS Group. The period also saw external validation, with Arca Climate securing a CDN$1.25 million grant to support its pilot with BHP, underscoring the technology’s early-stage promise. More recently, the data reveals a maturing investment landscape. In 2025, Arca successfully raised $12.65 million to accelerate its technology, a direct result of progress made at BHP’s site. This demonstrates a shift from seed-level funding to growth-stage capital, signaling rising investor confidence in the commercial viability of carbon mineralization.

Table: BHP-Related Carbon Technology Investments

Partnerships: Building a Collaborative Decarbonization Ecosystem

BHP’s decarbonization strategy is heavily reliant on a network of strategic partnerships that has expanded and deepened over time. The 2021-2024 period was marked by the formation of alliances to tackle emissions across the value chain, from steelmaking (HBIS Group, ArcelorMittal) to direct air capture (Arca Climate). These early collaborations were primarily exploratory, designed to test the feasibility of different technologies in real-world industrial settings. For instance, the partnership with ArcelorMittal and Mitsubishi involved testing a pilot-scale capture unit on a blast furnace, a crucial step in proving the technology for a hard-to-abate sector.

From 2025, these partnerships have shown clear signs of maturing from exploration to implementation and ecosystem building. The Arca collaboration evolved to include Wyloo, indicating successful initial trials and a move toward broader adoption within the mining sector. Similarly, the partnership with Carbon Clean in India advanced with the launch of a Global Innovation Centre, creating dedicated infrastructure to accelerate technology development. BHP also broadened its scope to address its own operational and value chain emissions through new alliances with CATL (battery technology), XCMG (fleet solutions), and COSCO Shipping (ammonia-fueled carriers). This demonstrates a strategic shift toward building an integrated, multi-faceted ecosystem to support its comprehensive climate goals.

Table: BHP’s Key Decarbonization Partnerships

Geography: A Strategic Focus on Key Industrial Hubs

Between 2021 and 2024, BHP’s carbon capture activities were geographically dispersed, reflecting a global strategy to engage with key partners in major industrial regions. Pilot projects were initiated in Australia (Arca’s carbon mineralization), China (HBIS’s CCU pilot), Belgium (ArcelorMittal’s steel plant), and India (JSW Steel collaboration). This footprint demonstrates a tactical approach, locating projects in nations that are central to BHP’s operations and the global steel industry, which is a primary source of Scope 3 emissions for the miner. Australia stands out as the hub for testing DAC-related innovations directly tied to mining operations.

From 2025 onwards, the geographic focus has both deepened and solidified in these key regions. The continued development of the Arca project in Australia, now with Wyloo’s involvement, cements the country as a leading testbed for turning mine waste into a carbon sink. In India, the establishment of Carbon Clean’s Global Innovation Centre, supported by BHP, marks a significant escalation from a feasibility study to building permanent R&D infrastructure. The new partnership with China Baowu reinforces BHP’s commitment to tackling emissions in China’s steel sector. This geographic concentration suggests BHP is moving beyond a scattered global search and is now doubling down on regions where it has significant operational presence and can influence major emissions-intensive industries.

Technology Maturity: From Pilot Launch to Validation and Acceleration

The maturity of carbon capture and mineralization technology within BHP’s portfolio has shown significant progression. In the 2021-2024 period, the technologies were firmly in the pilot and demonstration phase. The launch of the Arca project in late 2023 was a landmark for testing a novel DAC methodology (carbon mineralization) in a real-world mining environment. Similarly, the carbon capture unit at ArcelorMittal’s Gent plant, which began operating in mid-2024, was a pilot designed to prove feasibility over a one to two-year trial. These initiatives represented crucial, yet early-stage, bets on emerging solutions.

The period from 2025 to the present marks a critical shift toward validation and acceleration. The Arca technology pilot at BHP’s mine has evidently produced positive signals, attracting a new partner (Wyloo) and enabling Arca to secure $12.65 million in development funding. This is a key validation point, moving the technology from a speculative pilot to a venture with demonstrated potential and growing industry and investor backing. Furthermore, Carbon Clean’s move to launch a dedicated Global Innovation Centre in India, a 77,121 square foot facility with its own capture plants, signals a transition from one-off pilots to creating a platform for rapid, iterative technology development. This indicates that while not yet at full commercial scale, the underlying technologies are maturing rapidly, with a clear focus on accelerating the path to widespread deployment.

Table: SWOT Analysis of BHP’s Carbon Capture & Mineralization Strategy

Forward-Looking Insights: The Path to Industrial-Scale Carbon Removal

The most recent data from 2025 signals that BHP is entering a new phase where the primary challenge is no longer identification but execution and scale. The immediate future will be defined by the results of its key pilots. Market actors should closely watch for quantitative data from the Arca Climate project at the Mount Keith mine—specifically, the tonnes of CO2 mineralized per tonne of tailings and the associated costs. This data will be the ultimate validation of the technology’s commercial viability and will determine whether this solution can be deployed across BHP’s global operations.

The move by Carbon Clean to establish a dedicated Global Innovation Centre in India is another critical signal. We should expect an accelerated pace of technological refinement and cost reduction from this initiative. The key indicator to watch will be announcements of larger-scale deployments moving beyond the 100,000 t/year feasibility studies to full-scale commercial plants. Traction is clearly gaining for solutions like carbon mineralization that integrate directly with mining operations. In contrast, while still important, point-source capture in steelmaking may face a longer, more complex path to scale due to integration challenges. The year ahead will likely see BHP solidifying its role not just as a miner, but as a key enabler of a circular carbon economy, turning its largest waste stream into a powerful tool for atmospheric carbon removal.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the main change in BHP’s carbon capture strategy since 2025?
Since 2025, BHP has shifted from a broad, exploratory approach across many technologies to a more focused strategy validating and accelerating carbon mineralization. This pivot emphasizes turning its mine tailings into carbon sinks, as seen with the expanded Arca Climate partnership, moving it from a conceptual venture to a core part of its long-term strategy.

What is carbon mineralization and why is it a strategic focus for BHP?
Carbon mineralization is a process where reactive materials, like those in BHP’s mine tailings, capture CO₂ directly from the air and lock it away as a solid mineral. It is a strategic focus because it offers a unique opportunity to transform a major mining liability (waste tailings) into an environmental asset (a carbon sink), creating a potential circular economy solution that is integrated directly with its core operations.

How have BHP’s partnerships evolved over time?
Initially, from 2021-2024, BHP’s partnerships were exploratory, designed to test the feasibility of different technologies like point-source capture with steelmakers (HBIS, ArcelorMittal). Since 2025, these partnerships have matured towards implementation and ecosystem building. For example, the Arca pilot’s success attracted a new partner (Wyloo), and the Carbon Clean collaboration led to a dedicated Innovation Centre, signifying a move from testing concepts to building infrastructure for scaling solutions.

How is BHP’s investment approach supporting this strategy?
BHP’s investment approach has moved from providing initial project-specific funding (e.g., US$15M for a pilot with HBIS) to enabling growth-stage capital. The success of its Arca pilot, which was initially supported by a smaller grant, helped Arca raise a significant $12.65 million in 2025. This demonstrates a shift from seed funding to validating technologies to the point where they can attract major external investment, signaling rising commercial confidence.

What are the key indicators to watch for to gauge the success of BHP’s strategy?
Two key indicators to watch are the quantitative results from the Arca Climate pilot, specifically the cost and efficiency (tonnes of CO₂ mineralized per tonne of tailings), and the announcements of larger-scale deployments from Carbon Clean’s new Global Innovation Centre. These developments will provide the ultimate validation of the technologies’ commercial viability and their potential for widespread, industrial-scale deployment across BHP’s operations.

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