More of the world's major miners will inevitably begin taking responsibility for the greenhouse emissions produced by their customers including steelmakers and power stations that burn the resources they extract, the latest survey of global mining bosses has found.

Many of the 150 mining industry chief executives surveyed by Ernst & Young identified carbon footprint reduction as among their businesses' top emerging risks, alongside maintaining their "social licence" to operate in the face of ever-growing environmental and societal expectations.

Mining giant BHP has set ambitious public goals for its customers to cut their greenhouse emissions. Credit:Tony McDonough

Releasing the survey's results on Thursday, Ernst & Young determined that more miners would eventually follow the example recently set by Anglo-Australian mining group BHP, which has become the world's first to pledge to establish public goals to tackle not only its own emissions but emissions generated beyond its mine gates.

Indirect emissions, or "scope 3" emissions, are those caused by users of miners' products like coal and the steel-making ingredient iron ore and are far greater than emissions caused by miners' own operations (scopes 1 and 2 emissions).