Environmental impact of synthetic diamonds

[WinkHPD]

I thought many of you would find this interesting.

The major diamond miners have weighed in on the environmental impact of diamond mining. They claim that it takes less than one third of the energy to mine a diamond of one carat than it does to produce a one carat diamond in a laboratory. (I am not sure why the factories are called laboratories, must be a marketing thing.)

According to them, it takes 160 kilograms of Carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere to mine a one carat finished diamond while it takes the companies in the Diamond Producers Association 511 kilograms to produce the average one carat lab grown polished stone.

Meanwhile, the recently launched Lab Grown Diamond Council (LGDC) plans to create the first sustainability standard in the diamond and jewelry market.

And the debate rambles on...

Wink

Source for these interesting tidbits, Rapaport Magazine June 2019.

 

[tyty333]

Do you worry about the possibility of bias Wink? I dont know who is trustworthy.

 

[bludiva]

I read this kind of analysis about EVs too or any innovation that is touted as good for the environment. There's greenwashing in some cases, but in others the value is moving to a production method or technology that can in the future be powered by renewable energy. So if the lab diamond factories are better positioned to transition to solar / wind / etc instead of coal and eliminate their carbon footprint in the future it is still worth investigating that technology imho. Can the mining companies do the same? That would be great. If push came to shove we could seriously lower carbon output today, we just choose not to because it would eat away at profits and comfortable lifestyles.

 

[denverappraiser]

‘Clean energy’ is another bit of sleight-of-hand I see often. Mostly, electricity worldwide comes from coal, which in turn comes from mines. Ugly and dangerous mines at that. Obviously, that doesn’t fit the anti-mining marketing narrative of the factories so they promote the concept of green and renewable energy. They buy carbon credits to ‘offset’ their environmental impact. Other mined products, like diamonds or gold, have no similar program available. It doesn’t count if they fill in old mines, even mines that weren’t theirs (which they do by the way). No offset is enough. A ‘net positive’ environmental impact isn’t one of the choices.

 

[bludiva]

‘Clean energy’ is another bit of sleight-of-hand I see often. Mostly, electricity worldwide comes from coal, which in turn comes from mines. Ugly and dangerous mines at that. Obviously, that doesn’t fit the anti-mining marketing narrative of the factories so they promote the concept of green and renewable energy. They buy carbon credits to ‘offset’ their environmental impact. Other mined products, like diamonds or gold, have no similar program available. It doesn’t count if they fill in old mines, even mines that weren’t theirs (which they do by the way). No offset is enough. A ‘net positive’ environmental impact isn’t one of the choices.

carbon offsets are a shell game, totally agree. even though we have cleaner technology, things won't change until financial incentives or climate crisis forces the change. unfortunate for us humans but the earth will be ok in the very long run.

 

[Karl_K]

I call BS with a slice of possible truth.
There is a tremendous range of the energy requirements to produce mmd.
On the high side by several orders of magnitude is HTHP but it has been getting better.
The early processes were not economical compared to mined for production of larger stones due to energy costs.
CVD has fairly low power usage.
So using old HTHP process and older plant coal produced electricity your going to have a very high amount of co2 that could be higher then mined.
CVD on nuclear, wind or solar power is going to be much much lower.

But any way you look at mining is one of the worst things for the environment that we still do.
Alluvial diamond mining is even worse then mines.
There is no way of getting past that.

 

[WinkHPD]

Do you worry about the possibility of bias Wink? I dont know who is trustworthy.

I count on a great deal of bias, which is why I included the sentence about the the recently launched Lab Grown Diamond Council (LGDC) plans to create the first sustainability standard in the diamond and jewelry market. (That information was from a different press release in Rapaport than the comments from the mining association.)

You can be absolutely sure their numbers will be different from those of the major miner's association.

It will play out in the market place and the press, and my opinion is that there will always be a place in the market for both types of diamonds. What I, and other responsible jewelers, want to see is enough education provided without veils of propaganda so clients can make an educated decision as to what is correct for them.

Either choice is a good choice for the person making it, if they make it from an informed place.

Wink

 

[Garry H (Cut Nut)]

I think all sides will produce rubbish info just like politicians.
When ever carbon credits are said to be used I am even more suspicious. I simply think the whole thing is corrupt.

CVD has lower power consumption, but no companies declare their post HPHT treatments etc.

Heat treating ruby and sapphire. smelting aluminium.
Claims Norwegians are going to smelt steel with hydrogen rather than coking coal (which is very high grade coal).
Believe it all in 50 years. But I will be dead!

 

[Venzen007]

I imagine natural diamonds were produced by large amounts of energy over significant periods of time, so it would make sense to me, whether accurate or not, that making diamonds in a lab in less time would take more energy, but maybe not, maybe just different energy. It just seems like the diamonds in the earth are already made. Maybe we could use more innovation geared toward retrieving them more efficiently rather than creating new ones.

 

[MissStepcut]

‘Clean energy’ is another bit of sleight-of-hand I see often. Mostly, electricity worldwide comes from coal, which in turn comes from mines. Ugly and dangerous mines at that. Obviously, that doesn’t fit the anti-mining marketing narrative of the factories so they promote the concept of green and renewable energy. They buy carbon credits to ‘offset’ their environmental impact. Other mined products, like diamonds or gold, have no similar program available. It doesn’t count if they fill in old mines, even mines that weren’t theirs (which they do by the way). No offset is enough. A ‘net positive’ environmental impact isn’t one of the choices.

It depends where you live. Where I live, our Teslas are coal powered, which does make me laugh. But the new Lightbox facility is in Oregon, so I assume will be powered by hydroelectric. And I imagine that was the logic for building there.

 

[bmfang]

Even with coal, it depends on what type of coal you are burning. Brown coal/lignite is super bad. Other types of thermal coal are not as bad (and as an Aussie, we have some of the best quality and “less polluting” thermal coals in the global market relative to other sources worldwide).

 

[EncikG]

We can talk about clean energy and renewables but when u see an open cut mine, u can imagine the irreparable ecological damages.
Not sure if diamond mining would be the same but nevertheless...