Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Pan American Silver Chat conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there'll be a question and answer session. During the question session, if you would like to ask a question, please do it via webcast. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your speaker for today, Siren Fisekci, Vice President, Investor Relations and Corporate Communications for the Pan American Silver . Please go ahead.
Thank you, operator, and welcome everyone to our 2023 ESG call. We are pleased you could join us for a fireside chat with Pan American's President and CEO, Michael Steinmann, and our Senior Vice President, Corporate Affairs and Sustainability, Brent Bergeron, as they discuss Pan American's approach to environmental, social, and governance performance. The conversation will be moderated by Siddharth Samarth, Managing Director and Head of Sustainable Finance with CIBC Capital Markets. Siddharth has 15 years of experience in the banking sector and is currently responsible for building CIBC's sustainable finance franchise. His focus is on advising clients on the integration of sustainability into their corporate and financing strategy. Following the fireside chat, senior members of Pan American's management team will be available to respond to questions from investors and analysts. Please submit your questions through the webcast.
Before we begin, please note that the call includes forward-looking statements. Please see the forward-looking statements advisory on page 155 of our 2022 Sustainability Report, which is available on our website. I'll now pass the call over to Sid.
Thanks, Siren, and good morning, and thank you for joining us for Pan American Silver's ESG investor call. I'm pleased to have the opportunity to moderate this call. As Pan American approaches 30 years in the business, the company continues to grow, having earlier this year completed the Yamana transaction, which makes them one of the leading producers of silver and gold in the Americas. Sustainability considerations is core to the value creation of a company, and Pan American Silver has taken a number of strides in this direction, including linking sustainability considerations to its credit facilities. I'm happy to be joined today by the President and Chief Executive Officer, Michael Steinmann, alongside Brent Bergeron, Senior Vice President, Corporate Affairs and Sustainability. Good morning, Michael. Good morning, Brent. Good morning, Sid.
Good morning, Sid.
Well, we're going to open up today's conversation with a few questions from my side. Just to reiterate a couple of housekeeping items, as the operator mentioned, please feel free to drop questions through the Q&A toggle, and we'll attempt to address them through the call. And then lastly, I'm not intending to make any forward-looking statements on behalf of CIBC. Now, with that, why don't we get into our discussion? Michael, ESG continues to be a top risk and opportunity for mining and metal companies. Companies are working to understand and integrate ESG into their corporate strategies. How is ESG integrated across the different levels and functions at Pan American Silver? Could you give us some insight into how ESG is considered in Pan American's business strategy and decision-making process?
Sure. Good morning, Sid, and good morning, everyone on the call. Yeah, happy to answer this question, and you know what? This is very similar to any very, very crucial and important issue that we deal in the company, and of course, ESG is in that category. So it really starts with the tone on the top, but at the end, all the projects and work is obviously done in our mines and with our communities, et cetera. So how do we achieve that, to have that tone on the top and afterwards, people doing all the projects on site? Well, we start all the way up at the board level. We have a Community and Sustainability Development Committee at the board level.
That committee meets, I think at least four or five times a year, every quarter, and discusses all the issues with management for the past quarter, but also looking forward, what we're gonna do in the next few months, what we're gonna do in the next year when it comes to budgeting, et cetera, et cetera. That's really the tone right from the board and the importance that ESG plays in Pan American Silver, starting at the highest level of controls. That trickles down to me as the CEO and our senior and executive management team. We have an ESG Committee.
Again, we meet at least once a quarter and discuss our issues, and there will be way more hands-on, obviously, discussions than at that level. So that's the control from the CEO, senior and executive management level. And we have a lot of controls in place. Of course, we are a member of MAC, so we have all the Towards Sustainable Mining initiative that we install and a lot of other supports and systems in place that help us, you know, to put this really important framework in place. But then when it goes down further down to the assets, we are a decentralized organization. We have our country managers in place in each country we are working in, and then, of course, the mine managers.
They're responsible really to implement and work with those frameworks that have been established on the corporate level, and there are lots of them. We put in a lot of SPIs, Sustainability Performance Indicators. You see them actually in our reporting, and you will see them in our sustainability report. How we implement them, how we measure, I'll give you some examples, probably. Water use, energy use, greenhouse gas emission reductions, social risk management, community grievances and requests, community investments. There's a long list of those SPIs, and we use them to plan our programs, and we use them also to look back and rate what we did in the past quarter and in the past year. Really, really important.
As I said, those SPIs get shared again back with the board, and that's kind of closing the loop with the board, every quarter. Some of them, quite a few of them, of the ESG performance is actually related all the way to the compensation of, For my compensation and compensation of senior and executive management. Actually, at the moment, in 2023, it's about 33% of our incentive plan is one way or the other related to ESG metrics. And for those details, I would refer you to our circular, which is, of course, available on SEDAR, where you see every performance indicator and how it's related to our compensation. Maybe, Brent, did I miss anything here that you would like to add?
Thank you, Michael, and good morning, everyone. I think you did a very good job of going over a lot of the aspects in terms of how we integrate the ESG part. The important part to me, and something that we continue to working on is what I would consider to be the sustainability performance indicators. I think those are extremely important in terms of the sites. As you mentioned, Michael, the sites are being within a decentralized company, the sites themselves have to take a lot of decisions, but they have to do it within the framework of who our company is and what standards and what performances we expect from all of our sites.
So I think that by having these indicators in place, whereby we can support our sites in terms of where we want to be as a company, how we want to be doing things from an ESG perspective, and, and also how we want to be able to measure how our sites are actually improving in the areas that we want to see them. So we continue to develop these SPIs in terms of making sure that it is actually driving operational performance at site.
As we know, these days, with a lot of the issues that mining companies have with respect to community issues, it's important for us to be able to measure how our performance is moving forward, how our sites are actually managing a lot of the risk in these areas, and how we can support them in terms of making sure that what we do at site from an operational perspective, what we do in the communities in terms of our investments, in terms of our overall environmental performance, is done in a way that will reduce the overall risk of how our company is actually managing and operating in different countries.
Thanks, Brent.
Thanks. Thanks, Michael.
Yeah.
Thanks, Brent. That, that was a very, very, like, it's good to see the robust overall oversight that you've got, as well as then the decentralized management approach that you have, with the guardrails that you've put in place for the teams to operate on, in the various jurisdictions. Brent, perhaps, you can, you can, just building on some of those sustainable performance indicators. You know, it's been a few months since Pan American Silver published its 2022 Sustainability Report. What were some of the company's key, highlights and results from that report? And now, you know, also recognizing we're well into 2023, so how's the progress towards achieving some of its 2023 ESG goals coming along?
Okay, thank you very much for that, and a really good question because we do put a lot of work in terms of publishing our sustainability report. The company has been doing it now for over 10 years, and really important information in terms of being able to get that information out to our stakeholders, and also our investors, which, you know, we've seen over the past years an increased interest in terms of how our performance is in this area. So in terms of 2022, we've exceeded a lot of our goals, but unfortunately, there was one goal that we missed, and that had to do with our most important goal in terms of achieving 0 fatalities. Unfortunately, we did have some fatalities at 3 of our sites over the period of 2022.
And I think it's given the chance for the company to basically stop and reflect on what the company needs to be doing in terms of number one, achieving this goal, which is extremely important for us. As I mentioned, it's our number one goal, but also taking a look at how we can do things differently. And, you know, this goes all the way to our COO and the entire team, all the way to the board, that really wants to see how we can streamline, declutter, think differently, expand in terms of our training and technical abilities of our workforce.
Focus really on the aspect of our leadership at site, which our leadership have to be the people that are actually pushing the aspect of working safely and making sure that our workers are falling in line in terms of making sure that, you know, when something is not right, that they're, they do have the ability to raise their hand, to say stop, and actually discuss different items of risk that does affect their safety at site. So the entire team at the company is working on that right now. In terms of 2023, I can say that our record has been good. We're still looking at how we're working towards the different programs, and that's a journey for us right now. But we're paying a lot more attention in those areas.
On the environmental side, we did achieve 6 of our 9 goals, and some of these goals sometimes are not that easy for us to achieve, simply because an important part about mining is that, you know, whether you're doing open pit or whether you're underground, every time that your mining process continues to move forward, you're either going deeper or you're moving further away from your actual plant facilities. So therefore, the energy use that you're going to have usually is required to be higher. Bringing water to those areas also, in terms of how you're operating and how you're doing a lot of the processes, requires more intensity.
So, I think that when we take a look at what we've been able to achieve in 2022, a 19% reduction in greenhouse gas emission, a 9% reduction in terms of energy use, 14% reduction in terms of water use, and that's all from our base case from 2022. What I think is really important in this area is that we've been able to do this by looking at better, more efficient, innovative ways of actually performing our work, but doing this with the caveat in the background that we're actually doing things that is further away, deeper in the mine. So therefore, we're also trying to achieve this goal by something that's actually requiring us to actually have more information.
So, more energy and more water in terms of the gas, greenhouse gas emission. So I think that the company is on a good path in terms of making sure that we're moving towards these types of goals. For the current year, we are actually achieving some of those goals successfully also, and also trying to implement more ideas, working with the site, supporting them in terms of finding out better ways and more efficient ways of handling the energy usage at our sites. In terms of environmental incidents, we had no significant environmental incidents in 2022. So that was very significant for us in terms of making sure that that doesn't happen.
We're also looking at how we're securing renewable energy at a lot of our sites, and I think that that's also helping us in terms of our greenhouse gas emissions targets. We were able to do this last year at two of our sites in Mexico, which you know was something that we had been working on for a while. I think that that is also very important on how we continue to move forward with all of our sites, and looking at this and how we're doing this with respect to the integration of some of the ex Yamana sites that are coming in, and looking at how they're bringing in also renewable energy sources.
On the social side, we continue to make some significant investments in a lot of the communities where we operate. In 2022, the total amount was just under $15 million in all of our communities. We're also looking at how we're doing this differently. You know, we want to make sure that we're not just doing one-time donations. We're looking at this in terms of community investment projects. Community investment projects that are going to actually contribute to the closure activities that we have at the mine sites, because we want these types of investments to survive when the mine site is not going to be operating anymore also.
So a lot of good, good, results in those areas, and I think it's also indicative, you know, coming out of a pandemic, it's also indicative of how we've seen our sites continue to operate even post-pandemic, where we know that a lot of companies have had some significant challenges with this in different countries. But we've been able to do this up to now with very minimal disruptions at our site. So I think it does speak to the relationship that we do have with our communities and our focus on very, interesting and significant projects with them. So we keep moving towards that. And looking at 2023, we have already, you know, year to date, starting.
I'll go back to June, because we're still getting some results back in at this point. But it's looking pretty good in terms of us being able to achieve a lot of our goals, both on the environmental and on the social side, especially in the areas of GHG emission reductions, looking at the aspect of social and community, the response times that we have in terms of some of the grievances, or we call them requests for information coming in also. So I think we're moving in the right areas in terms of making sure that our teams are very focused in the areas that they need to be right now.
Thanks, thanks, Brent. Really, really comprehensive overview of what's going on across and the progress that's being made across those key sustainability pillars. And good to hear about the progress made so far in 2023. You touched upon Yamana, and Michael, perhaps if I could come back to you. You know, both Pan American Silver and Yamana Gold have had strong ESG commitments and employ leading ESG practices. However, each have had a different approach and strategy. So how are you integrating the two companies' ESG strategies and programs, and has there been a change in approach since the acquisition of Yamana?
Yeah, look, I think you're right, and the approach was probably a little bit different. Probably not that much as it looked from further away, but at the end, you know, the initiatives and goals, of course, that we have are very similar, right? I mean, it's of course, health and safety, emission reduction, our workforce, investment in socioeconomic development for our local communities, et cetera. So those goals have not changed. It's just the way to get there is a little bit different. Yamana was a bit more centralized. We are a bit more decentralized, as I explained.
We have that kind of board and senior management oversight that kind of circles back at the end, but we really have our local teams, you know, that live in the country, that mostly from those countries, they understand the communities, they are in constant communication. This is really the right group to build on this project and have that interaction. And so that's just I think really the only difference that, as I said, Yamana was running it more centralized, we're doing it more decentralized. The goals really have not changed. I think we, you know, we put the management teams together.
The integration is basically complete, and we really had a great chance here to put, you know, the best from both sides together and form even stronger teams and, you know, build on those goals that we had. And as I said, and as Brent said, a lot of effort done on greenhouse gas emission reductions, et cetera. And very similar than what Yamana already had in place before. So, not only on the ESG side, but also on the operational side. Probably the smoothest integration that I have seen in my career, and, as I said, that goes across the board, including our ESG efforts.
Well, thanks. Thanks, thanks, Michael, and good to hear about the lens that you're using and, you know, talking about leveraging best practices with the, the wealth of knowledge across, the human capital perspective also is something, to leverage on. So thank you, thank you for those insights. Brent, if we could go back to you, what do you consider are the key ESG risks facing Pan American Silver, and what is your approach to managing them? In particular, how are you considering, you know, there's lots of focus on climate risk and, the potential impact on operations from that perspective, just given the year that we've had so far?
Yeah, very good questions, and it is something that we're really trying to integrate within our different processes that we have here at Pan American. We've just completed a trip with our operations, finance, environmental, social teams, which is part of our normal budget trips that we take, visiting the sites and talking to the different management teams at site in terms of how their budgets are going to look. And one of the things that we really try and incorporate in terms of what they're doing, of course, operational excellence is what drives everything that we do. You know, starting from you know the resources at site and how we're drilling everything, how we're moving forward with that part, which is extremely important to us.
But we're also looking at how we're integrating those different types of risk, and, and you mentioned some of them now. The social risk, of course, you know, it is, it is something that is becoming a lot more important to our industry, not just to Pan American Silver, but all of the companies that are operating in different jurisdictions. Because we know that, you know, from, from the social side, if we do have, you know, stakeholders, if we do have partners in communities that are not happy with the way that we're actually operating in those areas, that it does lead, in certain countries, it does lead to blockades, it does lead to conflicts in different areas.
So the way our teams manage the different social aspects of what we do in terms of making sure that we are interacting, we are getting information from them in terms of what's important to them, and not only what's important from the relationship directly to the mine site, but in terms of also, what are they doing in their communities? How can we live together? How can we operate in an area together, whereby everybody is gaining a benefit from the operations that itself? So, taking a look at how we're investing in different types of industries, such as the agricultural industry, you know, how we're investing in infrastructure in different areas where we operate.
What we see is that we see that the social risks expand in terms of the ecosystem within which we're operating. I think that that's what we're trying to support our teams, you know, when we're doing, for example, these budget tours, to make sure that they're also looking at those types of risk, especially on the social side. On the environmental side, you know, climate change is definitely something that is affecting our sites. We are seeing more drastic rain events, storm events happening in different jurisdictions where we operate. So how are we managing that from an operational aspect also? How are we including that type of risk in terms of how we're currently operating, how we're expanding the mine?
We know water is a significant issue for us at site. It's a significant issues for the communities where we operate. So we need to be able to manage that within a system, within a footprint that actually allows us to live together. And I think that's an important aspect of what we continue to look at when we're talking to the sites and when we're supporting them. And we're seeing that right now in terms of how there are. For example, we do have a country risk process that we do. It's an assessment that we do on a quarterly basis with all of our sites. It has 10 different categories, of course, legal, taxation, environmental, industry risk, that all comes into play.
So we want our sites to actually be thinking about these types of risk in a way that it's not just what's contained from within the footprint of the mine itself, but what's happening also on the outside, and how those types of risk can actually come in and affect the operation. So, we've been working on implementing that, not just at the Pan American sites, but also now at the Yamana sites. And it's actually something that is being welcomed by all sites in terms of that interaction that we're having, that chance to actually look back and reflect on certain risks that may be coming up. And also in terms of how we're going to be managing these risks. Some of these risks are very difficult to manage.
Some of them, we can put plans in place to be able to do this, and that gives a lot more comfort also to our senior management team, to our board of directors, in terms of, if these risks are being identified as something that may or may not be material to us, how are we actually managing them going forward? And how do we give the comfort to also, you know, our board of directors, our shareholders, in terms of how the company is actually moving these types of risks forward? So a lot of work is being done in these areas.
Thanks. Yes, Michael. If I may jump in here. Yeah, absolutely. Because I know we actually have this plan to, you know, go to this fireside and then answer all the questions, but I just. While Brent was explaining what we do on the risks, I saw quite a few questions coming in on the risk side as well, and maybe, you know, it's a good place to be a bit more interactive here and answer some of those questions. What we do, especially with our community and workforce to control risk and to be sure that we understand what we are dealing with, and I can tell you, we do like an annual community of interest survey.
It's a very big survey that we do corporate-wide in each country that we operate. It's very detailed, with normally thousands of answers from different stakeholders. There's a participatory baseline perception studies and community programming, so a lot of interaction working with the community and understand where the people coming from, and that obviously helps us to identify where our risks lie. There is an annual worker well-being survey. Again, a survey with a lot of participation and that people sign in, and that gives us a good idea of what people think and going on.
Last but not least, there is obviously a grievance mechanism in place for community and workers on each of our site, each of our office, where people can, you know, voice good or bad, or what they want to change, or what their questions are, and that will be again circling all back to the board and discussed in our quarterly meetings. So I think that's very important to make this statements here, but I've seen a few of the questions also, how it relates in handling human rights risks. And maybe Christopher Lemon, our General Counsel, you can jump in here.
As we're just talking about risk, it's probably good to explain here to some of our listeners how we deal with human rights and human rights risks in the company. Christopher, are you on?
Me? Hello?
Yeah. Yeah, we can hear you, Christopher.
You can hear me now, sorry. And thank you, Michael, and good morning, everybody. Yeah, I mean, we conduct human rights due diligence and human rights assessments on an ongoing basis. We do that mainly in-house, and that's by intent, and it's transversal. And, you know, by transversal, I mean it intersects everything we do. And we've already talked-
About a lot of the mechanisms that we use for our human rights due diligence. And the point is to for us to identify, assess, avoid, and mitigate potential human rights impacts and risks. And we have a global human rights policy that specifically sets out that we need to conduct ongoing human rights due diligence. And we also recognize that human rights risks differ at each of our operations, and that's why it's really important, as Michael mentioned, to engage with our communities of interest. And we have site-specific processes that help us identify what our potential human rights risks and impacts may be.
Michael talked a little bit about the participation, participatory processes that we have, including baseline studies, cultural studies, perception assessments, and these help us understand what the priorities and concerns of our host communities are. We also have community and employee response mechanisms, and this helps us understand what our communities and our employees, you know, what their concerns are about human rights. And then, at the site level, we work with local professionals, including, you know, social workers, teachers, health practitioners. And again, the intent is to identify concerns and risks that we can address. We also, you know, obviously we have labor unions at our sites, and we have labor negotiations and a collective bargaining process.
And this, you know, further helps us understand what their concerns are with respect to human rights so that we can address those. And we do, you know, assessments on an annual or quarterly basis with respect to health and safety risks, and environmental risks. And again, this goes back to, you know, making sure we understand what our human rights risks are. And we have some specific processes in place for screening human rights risks.
We specifically screen for child and forced labor risks at our operations, and we have new legislation coming in in Canada on January 1st that will require us to prepare reports that are approved by the board and to file with the Canadian government in May on our human rights performance with respect to child and forced labor. Again, we do the country level risk assessment that Brent talked about. We screen our suppliers. We have a very sophisticated and comprehensive supplier and contractor screening system. And then finally, we have our compliance with the Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights, and we do specific security and human rights assessments.
When we do an acquisition such as we did with Tahoe, and then with, you know, subsequently, we do proper due diligence on our acquisitions and our joint ventures, and of course, we did that with Yamana. We also appointed a human rights officer that lives in Latin America, and she conducts and helps coordinate this transversal human rights assessment process across all our operations.
Then, of course, overarching this is our human rights policy. That is kind of the, you know, the overarching guideline for us, that we all follow us on. Thanks. Sid, back to you.
Well, thanks, thanks for that, a very, very robust discussion. Just if you can perhaps, like, build on this, Michael, like, key creation for value generation is certainly linked to ESG and, you know, the Escobal mine in particular. Can you provide us any updates just on the ILO consultation process? We've got a couple of questions on the chat line related to that.
Yeah, yeah, no, I saw, I saw that there's some questions coming in. I'm happy to give an update here, and we also have Sean here on the call, so I will ask Sean afterwards to fill in any more details on the process. You know, process, I mean, that is working already for quite a while. There was, of course, some delay, you know, with COVID, but it's an ILO 169 consultation with the Xinca population around the Escobal mine. It's a process that's held by the government. It's run by the Minister of Mines together or with the indigenous group.
Of course, we are party to it, but it's not run by Pan American Silver. I think in Q2 2023, the information transfer process that is described in phase two of the consultation timeline was completed. Everything is posted, by the way, on a website by the government. You can find the link to this website on our website as well, with all the details there, so it's great open discussions there.
I think at the moment, the next step will be that, Xinka Parliament representatives will review all the information with their consultants, go back to the community, and then come back with further discussions on concerns, impacts, mitigation measures, et cetera, of the project. I'm very pleased that we hosted several visits with, on our side, actually, with the members of the Xinka Parliament, which is, you know, a very, very important way to have this dialogue and also showcase, you know, the mine, its modern installations, top-of-the-line, you know, fully water recycling, et cetera.
I mean, there's a lot of really, really, really modern top-of-the-line installations on site, especially when it comes to dry stack tailings. So there's no conventional tailings down there. There's. So it's a full water recycling from that tails, et cetera. So very interesting. I think there's no timeline because, you know, we're not controlling the process. As I said, it's between the Ministry of Mines and the Xinka Parliament. We probably, most people know that there will be a change of government mid of January in Guatemala.
So, it's always a bit difficult, you know, when that happens in any place in the world, I guess, to exactly predict how this is gonna, you know, impact the process. But we had some meetings with the incoming party, and, you know, that they assured us that they would support, obviously, a responsible company like Pan American Silver, you know, in Guatemala. So but as I said, you know, we'll see when that change happens. Maybe, Sean, you wanna give some more background to this? And by the way, Sean is running our efforts in Guatemala. Sorry, Sean, we can't hear you. Or maybe S-
Uh-
Maybe, Sid, we're gonna go ahead with, and then we bring Sean in later on-
Sure, yep
when we sort out the technique.
Yep. Yep. That, that, that's fine. Thanks. I appreciate, I appreciate the update over there. And perhaps one question, one more last question from me, and then I'll hand it over to, to Siren, who's, who's gonna moderate the questions which are coming in, for us over here. You know, look, in terms of, I would say, just silver, its use in terms of the decarbonization strategy, and you're seeing a, a big focus on decarbonization. So how are you thinking about that from your mining operations? And then, also, can you talk about the role that the product plays in, in some of these decarbonization, efforts, just given the focus on climate change and, and the requirement to decarbonize industries as quickly as possible?
Yeah, I will just start with that, and maybe Brent, you can weigh in afterwards or Steve. Lots of efforts on there. We obviously, you know, fully align, I think, with our goals, where we wanna get to. We made public that we wanna, you know, have at least a 30% greenhouse gas reduction by 2030, and then a long-term goal of net zero by 2050. But, you know, for me, it's really let's work every year and get an effect that's. You know, I think one issue with this decarbonization is that people put out goals very, very far out, and it's far away for everyone.
I think, you know, we have to take responsibility and do that year by year and look at some reductions. As Brent already said, like a 19% reduction on greenhouse gases last year. That really happened mostly because we have 100% renewable energy now at our Mexican operation, so great, great, great change there. I think so far this year, we're, you know, looking at another somewhere 18% reduction. Some are a lot of efforts that we do on our side. Some is an effect of Manantial Espejo, the mine in Argentina, that, you know, run out of resource and is in care and maintenance. But another, you know, big, big step in reducing our carbon footprint.
Then, you know, what's really important to me, it's at the moment, probably less than 30% of the electric energy we use comes from fossil fuels. So over 70% of the electric power we use comes from renewable sources, and that has not changed with the acquisition of Yamana. Actually, the three largest out of the four operations, that's El Peñón, Minera Florida, and Jacobina, the biggest one in Brazil, operate 100% on renewable electric energy. So, that is really like, you know, continues the theme that we have on greenhouse gas reduction. So a lot of efforts there, a lot of efforts, and I think a lot of results for the world will come in with new technology, and we are working on that.
We obviously, you know, changing our, and updating our mining fleet constantly to, to have way more efficient equipment in place. There's a lot of controls we can put that in place. Just give you a little example. In Timmins, we achieved, you know, 110-tonne reduction just really by automating and controlling with software in a much detailed way, our dewatering, ventilation, and compressor use. And that, you know, results in quite a meaningful reduction, and that's something we can apply in many places. We did the same in Peru last year, and saw 220 tonnes of reduction. So, a lot of projects we can do.
I think over the next few years, there will be a lot of new technology coming in and be available to the world as well. But lots of steps that we already achieved towards our 2030 goal, and I really hope that, you know, that we can surpass our goal by 2030. But as I said, I really think it's very important that we you know, report this every year and look, have a close look every year, make sure there is a reduction every year that we can achieve, and not just having a very, very long-term goal out there that, you know, it's really important that the world looks at this as: What can we do this year? What can we do next year?
And continue to build on that. You mentioned something really interesting, and this is obviously the product we produce, silver. We are the second-largest silver producer in the world, and silver has an incredible important role and plays an incredibly important role in the decarbonization, in the change, of, of how we use energy. And the reason for that, well, there's, there's lots of reasons, I think. I, I, and I assume most people know that, you know, silver is used in solar panels. It's an essential- the essential metal to produce solar panels, and it's a lot of silver used in solar panels.
When you look at the prediction of the Silver Institute, and please, if you need more details on that, on the website of the Silver Institute, you can download the Annual Silver Survey and a lot of information. There are some special reports on electric cars and on solar panels, et cetera, that are available as well. But, you know, this year, when you look at the silver supply, which is, give or take, about 1 billion ounces in the world, maybe about 180 million of that is ounces is recycling. The rest comes from mine production. 16% of that silver this year is estimated to be used to produce solar panels in the world. So that's a very fast-growing use of silver, and of course, that's a huge positive impact for the world that comes from that silver production.
Of course, we need to reduce the energy and greenhouse gas emission on our sides, but the positive effect that silver has in the world, you know, is really important to understand and to mention at this place. And it's not only in the solar panels, but when you look about, give or take, 56% of the silver produced is used in industrial applications, and the biggest ones of those is electrification. So silver is used in soldering, silver is used to build computer components and electric components, et cetera. And so that's a huge amount of silver. So it's about 560 million ounces a year used.
As I said, the biggest use of the biggest part of that is solar panels, but, you know, a lot going into electric cars. Of course, it's not, it's not used in the batteries. You have the battery metals for that, but you have charging stations, you have computers controlling the batteries in the car, all the computer systems in the car that get more and more complicated and complex. So a lot of silver is used for that. So any electrification, any computer you have, any phone you have, there is silver in there. Don't forget that. So when you look at the silver uses, where it's going here, electrification, computers, I mean, we will have more automation. We'll have self-driving cars. We will have
As I said, I just, you know, gave you an example of how we can actually reduce our greenhouse gas emission by automation and more controls on the computer side for our operations, and that's not only for us, that's worldwide for any production. So a very important part, where silver is being used for the energy transition, electric cars, communication, because we can only do that if we have very strong networks to communicate, right? All these electric cars need to talk to each other, and we need to be able to use all those batteries at the end, actually, to store and optimize how we access that electric energy.
So you obviously see, I'm very excited about the use of silver in the future, but I think it is a really, really important metal for the electrification. But then don't forget it's, you know, there's a few more uses that I just wanna like to mention here, which is obviously the antibacterial property of silver, so a lot of uses in hospitals, water purification, et cetera. So if you put it all together and you say, you know, we use it, there will be more electrification in the world. There will be more controls, computers, et cetera. I think that's a given. There will be more communication. There will be, you know, more need of silver for water purification, et cetera.
So you can make a lot of case, you know, a very strong case for the silver uses, of course, and that all plays into how the world's gonna change in the future. Not only greenhouse gas emission reduction, which is a very, very important one, but I think there will be many other things and that we see that are better controlled, thanks to silver and in those componentry and industrial applications. So thanks, Sid.
Well, well, thanks. Thanks, Michael. And certainly, like, a really, really important play as we see just the economies evolve over here and the role that silver has to play over here. Thanks, thanks for highlighting that. You know, I'm gonna take this opportunity now to pass it over to Siren Fisekci, who's the VP of Investor Relations and Corporate Communications, Pan American Silver. She's also being joined by other members of Pan American Silver's team, to just moderate the next portion of the session based on the questions which we're receiving through the chat line. So, Siren, over to you.
Thanks, Sid. The first question, or one of the questions that came through is: How would local mine management become aware of the perception and sentiment of the neighboring mine communities, particularly sentiment on the mine activities related to access to jobs, business opportunities, training, and benefits? How does Pan American stay ahead of potential community action, protests, unrest, and community unhappiness?
Yes, thanks, Siren. And Brent, I will pass it on to you and your team. I think there's quite a few questions that go in that direction here that I see on the question and answer, so please go ahead.
Thanks, Michael, and absolutely a great question because, as I mentioned before, and I'll pass it on to Monica Moretto to help me with this one also. But I mean, we don't live in a vacuum when it comes to our mine sites. I mean, we do live in communities, we work in those communities. We have workers who do both live and work in those communities. So I think it is important that we do have proper systems, that we do have proper processes in place to be able to, number one, communicate directly with a lot of the community members.
And also have processes that are very structured in place, and also culturally accepted in different countries where we operate, to make sure that, number one, we are getting that type of information that's coming back to us, and also the information that we need to transfer to the communities also. And also, we have processes in place in terms of the response time, the plans that are being put forward, in terms of that communication or that interaction. But I think that that's all important for us in terms of what, not only our social teams are doing, but also our operational teams are doing.
Because we're all part of that community where we operate and where we live, and I think it is important that we do have those processes in place to be able to capture that information and interact with it also. Monica, I'll let you add a little bit more to that also, which I think is really important work that you're doing.
Thank you, Brent, and thank you all for the call today. I heard a little bit, actually capturing information that Michael was giving around community work and what we do, and Christopher, and obviously Brent. I just wanna say, you know, we have the management systems, we have a lot of control points, we have a lot of tools that we use to test what's happening in a community and in general, in the area where we are. But all those things are important, but they are actually capturing the sentiment of a community that has to do with the work that we do every single day on the ground, and that, I think, is the most important one because it's a reflection of all the work that we do every single day.
So our team spends countless hours with community members, going with them through a lot of things that we do, processes. Some countries today, nowadays, are more regulated on how processes should look like, and there are requirements for assemblies and for sharing information, but a lot of other countries don't have that. So we actually go through the highest standards that we have as a company to make sure that every country is at the same level of engagement. I think it's important also to add to this, that unfortunately, we are not isolated, we are part of a bigger discussion in a country. So there are things that happen in a country that also contribute to that sentiment from a community.
So it's not exactly only what we do, but as well, the place we're immersed in and the reality we're immersed in. And as you know, some of the countries we've been working in, in the last few years have been going through a lot of economic distress and a lot of political distress, so that also contributes to how a community feels about certain things. So we are really paying attention constantly to those things and managing that risk as well, and that frustration that a lot of the times has an effect on the work that we do. And to the point of what Brent was saying, because I saw also that we had a question on that.
They were talking about the SPIs this morning, which I think they're really important, again, going back to our management systems and how we have those checkpoints along the way. The grievance management system, that is really robust, and it's been along the way for 10 years, more than 10 years in Pan American Silver. We have many SPIs this year, and the next sustainability report, we're gonna add a little bit more data. We've been requested to add a little more data on what - how we capture that. So we have a number of grievances and requests, but we also look at the status and grievances, the response closing time, and also the first response, which should be within 15 days, and the number of grievances closed to date.
We really, really make an effort to go through every single grievance and every single request that we get and analyze, because there is a sentiment there that sometimes changes depending on the situation, and that's really important to us. I just wanted to clarify a little bit more on grievances and SPIs as well, because they're part of this discussion.
Monica, as we are just in this topic, I see there is a question that would like to understand more what our ESG efforts are in our Timmins mines. Maybe that's a good time to, you know, to give some examples, what we do with the First Nations there and with the community around, and maybe you and Brent can give us an update there.
Yeah, we, we do have, we do have, IBAs, Impact Benefit Agreements in place, with, some of the First Nation communities in those areas. And, I think it, it really speaks to the partnership that our mine site has been able to, establish over the year. We have, we have a very good relationship with them in terms of some of the programs that are part of the agreement, and some of the programs that we look outside of the agreements in terms of working, directly with them. So I, I think that when I take a look at what is actually being done. And, and Timmins, it's really interesting because Timmins is, of course, a mining, a mining town. There's a lot of different operations in the areas.
So it's not that we're competing for those types of activities, but it's, it is very important that we do have our mechanisms in place, as Monica mentioned, in terms of being able to interact directly with some of our stakeholders and our partners in the areas. We do quite a bit in terms of some of the local initiatives, some of the food banks, some of the local charity initiatives also that are in the area. Also, we've done quite a bit of work with some of the educational facilities in the area, not just to tell people what mining is all about, but also investing in the labor force in the area in terms of some programs to bring young people into the actual mining labor force.
We know that that's an incredibly big issue here in Canada and many countries. We've seen enrollment in these areas go down over the years. So what we're trying to do is work with these stakeholders in terms of making sure that we are attracting qualified people to come and work with us, that they understand the aspect of mining and how mining is done today, whether it's on the environmental side or the social side or the operational side. It does open up quite a bit of opportunities for people. So we look to focus our ESG efforts in those areas to make sure that, you know, there, there is a, a significant benefit to our stakeholders in the areas, but we also link that benefit directly to our mine site.
Brent, to add, I think it would be good if Matt can like, like summarize a little what they're doing in environmental, because they're actually doing really good work, in the environmental projects as well, in Timmins. Matt Andrews?
Yeah, sure. Good morning, everyone. Yeah, the Timmins mines, both Timmins West and Bell Creek, I think are great examples of some of the decarbonization efforts that Michael and Brent have mentioned earlier today. We have an energy manager in Timmins, who every year is working on a range of projects related to ventilation, dewatering, and decarbonization of those mines. I don't know how much. I don't think we have a lot of time left to get into a lot of detail on that, but we have some great information in our sustainability report about the work in Timmins around decarbonization.
I'll just add, Matt, if I can, that this year also is the year that we're having our sustainability conference, where we're bringing in a lot of our sustainability leaders from different sites and countries all together for a conference where we're going to be sharing a lot of those best practices in terms of, as Matt mentioned, what Timmins is doing right now.
I think it's really important as we've grown the company, you know, the purchase of Tahoe Resources, and now the purchase of Yamana Gold, how we bring a lot of the people together in terms of, number one, making sure that people understand our expectations with respect to the standards and what we use as a company and what we stand by, but also in terms of some of the ideas that are currently being used at different sites, especially on the ESG side. As Matt mentioned, there's a lot of good items that are being actually done right now in Timmins and other sites, so that our people can actually interact and take those ideas and see if they can actually be applied to other operations.
I think that those types of activities are also very good, and part of the integration process, as Michael mentioned, that, you know, we're currently doing with all of the people and all of the teams at these different sites, but really important to bring them together so that we can share a lot of these ideas.
Yeah. Siren?
Yeah, I see that Sean McAleer was able to join the call, so I thought he could provide us with an update on the ILO 169 consultation for the Escobal mine.
Yeah, thanks, Siren.
Adding to that-
I hope you can hear me okay.
I can.
Okay.
Maybe after that, Matt can step in because we did have a question linked to that about testing and ensuring the water quality is good for the Escobal operation, and to clean up any sources of contamination.
Yeah, I can, I can probably answer-
Contamination, yeah
Touch on both of those a bit,
Okay, sure.
Well, and-
Thanks
Michael gave a pretty good overview of the ILO 169 consultation process. And the, you know, the highlight, I think, in the last quarter has really been the visits to the mine site, where Xinka Parliament and their consultants have been able to come to the site, tour the underground operation, and spend time to understand the technology we use, the risks that we've identified, and some of the risk management tools and practices that we have in place, and certainly an exposure to the Towards Sustainable Mining practices and responsible mining commitments we have at Escobal. So it's been a real real effective dialogue, a lot of information shared.
As you can imagine, the amount of technology and technical information we have, you know, can be overwhelming to anyone who starts to research and investigate, but we really are looking into the different concerns that they have and having good dialogue and good conversations, and all of this under the eye of the Ministry of Energy and Mines, who are overseeing the process, and with participation of other institutions in Guatemala. So the next steps, really, we're waiting for some future meetings that may happen towards the end of the year, where we'll have more engagement and more dialogue around the concerns there. The company and the operation has been suspended since 2017, but we haven't been liberated of our environmental obligations.
So we have over 200 environmental obligations, as we conduct our care and maintenance operations. That includes all of our water monitoring activities. Our water discharge and water monitoring shows that we're in compliance with the local standards. So contamination issues really are not a concern we have. It's really communicating issues around water quality, concerns around water quality. During the process, we provided copies of over 40 monitoring reports since the project's inception and since the baseline, which has provided the consultants who are working with the Xinka Parliament some good information that they'll be able to share and interpret, and I think belies some of those concerns that have been expressed in the past. Again, our-
Our care and maintenance activities, we were recognized for our reforestation activity with the first place award from the industry chamber this year. So we are setting an example, and we do have quite a bit of work, even though we are suspended, to meet all of our environmental obligations with the Ministry of Energy and Mines and the obligations that we have with the Ministry of Environment. So I think that's a good summary of where we are today, and we're looking forward to continued engagement, and we are very, very happy to be participating in the process. There's a lot of transparency, and there's been some real effective communication here in the last few months, especially with the site visits.
Thanks, Sean. We have come to the top of the hour. For any further questions, please send them to ir@panamericansilver.com, and we will respond to you directly. I will now turn the call over to Michael and Sid for closing comments.
I don't know, Sid, do you wanna start?
Yeah, I was just gonna say, no, listen, thanks, thank you, Michael and Brent and the entire management team for really a frank discussion on a broad range of sustainability topics, that we've talked about over here. And, Mike, back to you just in terms of any last comments and remarks from your end.
Sure, and thank you everyone for calling in. I think this is a great format that's less formal, but very interactive. I really enjoyed it. I think it's a great format to transmit and showcase what we do. Unfortunately, it's an hour. It's only. We do so much in so many countries. It's only a small part of it. And please go to our website, have a look at our sustainability report. That's really, you know, the big document once a year we put out with a lot of details on all the work that our team is doing everywhere in the world. And it's not only one report.
There's actually, I think there's already 12 reports on our website, and we started doing a sustainability report since 2010. You know, way before, really, this became kind of mainstream, and for us it was really because it's the right way to do business, it's the right way to work with our communities, and that always has been, and, as I said, that's in detail shown and, since 2010, of course, those reports evolved, they got bigger, and there's more and more information on the company, and the company's growing as well. So please have a look at those reports. They're all available. Please, reach out to our teams with further questions. I know I see there's, you know, questions coming in.
Unfortunately, we don't have time to answer all of them. I think I hope we, you know, at least touched on most of the issues you're touching on. But please reach out to Brent, to Monica, to Siren, to the team. We are, you know, happy to help and answer any questions you have. Communication is key to ESG, in my view. So thank you very much for calling in today, and have a great day. Thanks, everyone.
This concludes today's conference call. You may all disconnect.