Miners Have a Pesky Pollution Problem: Their Customers

ADELAIDE, Australia—In the race to bring down global carbon emissions, tension is building between miners and their shareholders over who is responsible for curbing pollution pumped into the atmosphere by the world’s power plants and steel mills.

Mining companies are being pressured by environmental activists and some investors to set targets for reducing emissions linked to the use of their products. But miners argue that they can’t control how customers, including in China, the world’s biggest buyer of most mined commodities, use them.