Sustainability Indicators For Lignite Open Cast Mines Of Greek Public Power Corporation S.A. In Ptolemais Area Of Western Macedonia, Greece

Sustainable development is becoming increasingly more important for the mining industry and therefore mining companies should be able to measure their progress towards sustainability. Greek Public Power Corporation (PPC) S.A. is a company which produces lignite in open cast mines in Western Macedonia and in Peloponnesos. The present paper uses operational data kindly offered by PPC S.A. to derive sustainability indicators by means of Data Envelopment Analysis for three large scale lignite open cast mines of PPC (i.e. Main Field, Kardia Field and South Field mines). It also examines three environmental parameters related to the contribution of these mines to sustainable development; namely, the annually produced volume of waste masses, the annually produced quantity of ash from the lignite combustion and the annual volume of pumped water. The calculated sustainability indicators were keeping constantly better during the last years of the different periods for each one of mines studied here, showing that the mines met their goals from both economic and environmental aspects during the last years of their operational periods studied. The contribution of open cast lignite mines studied here to sustainable development can be monitored by the derived indicators analyzing annual mine operational data. The derived indicators can serve as tools to detect where improvements can be made, though another potential use of these indicators can also be during the preparation of feasibility studies or environmental impact studies using necessary benchmarking data.