By Colleen O’Hanlon
Resilience and innovation are critical in the geoscience community, particularly with the rising demand for metals like copper, driven by the increasing need for data centres and artificial intelligence (AI), Seequent Segment Director Mining Dr Janina Elliott said.
Dr Elliott emphasised this point during a panel discussion at a Seequent customer event at PDAC 2025 which was hosted by Anthony Vaccaro, President, The Northern Miner Group and where she was joined by Seequent Chief Technology Officer John Vandermay and Vice President of Seequent Labs Alex Boucher.
She also highlighted the essential role these factors play in navigating the complexities of modern mining and resource management.
Dr Elliott highlighted the significant challenges the industry faced amidst the push for more information technology. She noted that the public often overlooked the fact that the expansion of data centres and AI not only demanded more copper for construction but also required a connected global energy grid to power computation, batteries, and the cooling systems of these data centres.
PDAC 2025: The panel discussion at Seequent’s customer event was hosted by Anthony Vaccaro, President, The Northern Miner Group, left and featured Seequent’s CTO John Vandermay, Segment Director Mining Dr Janina Elliott and Vice President Seequent Labs Alex Boucher.
“Let me give you just an example of one particular vector of change – and that focusses on copper and data centres,” Dr Elliott said.
The AI revolution was driving unprecedented metal demand. Today, a large hyperscale data centre used 500MW of power, with plans to increase this to 1GW. For example, 1GW of power would require 30,000 to 60,000 tonnes of copper, which was about half the size of the CN Tower, a 553m tall landmark on Toronto’s skyline, Dr Elliott said.
Currently, global data centres consume 35GW of power. This was forecast to triple to 100GW by 2030, which would utilise 20% of all the copper mined today.
Silicon Valley investors would likely ask how the mining industry could operate more efficiently to build necessary reserves, and how more deposits could be discovered more quickly, now that shallow ones had already been picked off. The answers to these questions lie in being more resilient and adaptable, Dr Elliott said.
“When the financial crisis hit, we were, as I said, in a very in a similar dilemma, we had about a 90% reduction in global market capitalisation and the loss of skilled labour, geologists had to leave the industry there just wasn’t space for them, we had to do so much more with significantly less and that’s true today too, and ultimately the answer presented itself through technology.”
Elliott recounted the profound industry impact of Seequent Leapfrog which quickly gained traction and changed the landscape of the mining industry.
“Today we are at the brink of change yet again, I think we all recognise that,” Elliott said. “Except that today, Seequent stands here with two decades of experience in innovation, but we are still driven by the same level of creativity and the passion for our geoscience community, we’re really in it for the people.”
She reassured the audience that while innovation and readiness for change are critical, Seequent remained a trusted partner in navigating these transformative times.
Seequent Chief Technology Officer John Vandermay underscored that Leapfrog would continue to be core technology for Seequent.
However, it would increasingly connect to the cloud through Seequent Evo, allowing online collaboration among geoscientists and leveraging cloud computing power.
Vandermay gave an example of how Driver, one of the two new cloud-enabled apps in Seequent Evo, used machine learning to help geologists systematically recover structural features of mineral deposits. Integrated with Leapfrog, it allowed the rapid creation of geologically realistic models closely connected to data.
Additionally, Seequent is investing in Leapfrog Edge’s resource estimation while advancing geostatistics in Evo with cloud computing. Evo seamlessly integrates with Leapfrog Edge, so extensive scripting knowledge isn’t needed to use geostatistics, though it’s available a via software development kit if desired.
Finally, the resulting block model could be securely managed in BlockSync, the second app in Seequent Evo, providing a single source of truth for resource models for all downstream mining use across the value chain.
“You will see an expansion of hybrid data and cloud compute with Leapfrog where key capabilities will start running profoundly faster, magically delivering results in fractions of the times compared to what you currently experience with our products today,” Vandermay said.
Mining customers can register their interest in Seequent Evo by filling out this form.