Deanna Kemp, The University of Queensland; Eleonore Lebre, The University of Queensland; John Owen, The University of Queensland, and Richard K Valenta, The University of Queensland
The benefits of switching to clean energy are huge. As with any industrial activity, the transition has potential environmental and social impacts.
As we head towards net-zero emissions, record quantities of copper will be required. Copper is critical for solar panels, wind turbines, electric vehicles and battery storage.
Unfortunately, we’re headed for a supply crunch. Market analysts estimate the annual copper supply shortfall could be as high as 10 million tonnes by 2030 if no new mines are built. This means prices are on the rise, giving miners an incentive to bring new copper mines to market.
The complexity of these new mines will be unprecedented. Unless mining is done differently, rushing to bring these projects into production could unleash unacceptable, catastrophic impacts onto local people and environments.
A golden age for copper
Until recently, the copper market has been flat. Prices have been low, and it has not been a good environment for producers. The market is now on the move.
The demand for copper and other energy transition minerals has sparked predictions of a commodity boom, and a golden age for mineral exploration.
On April 12-13, major producers including BHP, Rio Tinto and Anglo American will convene for the World Copper Virtual Conference to gather market intelligence.
But in the face of high global demand, it’s critical these big companies don’t gloss over copper’s sustainability challenges.
4 major sustainability challenges
There are four major challenges the mining industry faces in the impending copper boom. How well these challenges are overcome will determine who wins and loses in the energy transition.
1. Unearthed copper deposits are locked up in remote and difficult locations
Unearthed copper deposits — known as “orebodies” — are often found in places such as the high Andes, the Arctic, and the deep sea.
The social, environmental and technical challenges of projects in these locations will be greater than before. For example, BMW, Samsung and Volvo have just backed calls for a moratorium on deep sea mining.
2. Many proposed projects face public opposition
This includes major projects such as Resolution Copper in the US, Pebble in Canada, Tampakan in the Philippines, and Frieda River in Papua New Guinea.
Public opposition towards these and other large-scale copper projects means they could face difficult legal battles before these projects are permitted to go ahead.
3. Future copper mines are projected to be lower grade and deeper
Grade is a measure of the how much valuable metal there is in the ore body (deposit). Deeper, lower grade orebodies means new copper mines are likely to generate more waste rock, more tailings, and hazardous elements such as arsenic.
Read more: World-first mining standard must protect people and hold powerful companies to account
Tailings are the residues from mining and minerals processing, and is made up of finely ground rock, chemicals and water. If the projected demand is met, we calculate the world will produce more than nine times the amount of copper tailings between 2000 and 2050, than in the entire century prior.
Meanwhile, the industry faces a crisis of credibility over its management of this hazardous waste.
4. New copper mines will likely be located in politically and ecologically sensitive areas
Our research from 2019 found 65% of copper ore bodies that haven’t been mined are in areas with high water risk: too little water means miners compete for it among other local water users, and too much means waste can be difficult to contain.
Almost half (47%) of these ore bodies occur on or close to Indigenous peoples’ lands, and 64% within or near areas critical to biodiversity conservation. 50% are in socially and politically fragile countries, such as the Democratic Republic of Congo.
A simple price rise won’t solve major issues
In the past, the mining industry has relied on rising prices to address supply shortfalls. Higher metal prices give companies the financial capital they need to operate in difficult locations and invest in new mining technologies.
Some of this capital will support sustainability improvements, such as recycling and reductions in water and energy use. But many of the sustainability challenges we’ve outlined above are not price sensitive.
Read more: A brutal war and rivers poisoned with every rainfall: how one mine destroyed an island
Mining companies cannot pay their way out of biodiversity loss, extreme poverty, and corruption risk. If they don’t engage these big challenges before the copper boom gets underway these impacts will be baked in mining’s future legacy, without clarity about who takes responsibility in the long term.
This would add to the devastating impacts existing mines have already caused. One famous example is the Panguna mine in Bougainville, which led to massive environmental damage and triggered a civil war.
What’s more, intensifying social and environmental impacts of copper mines could jeopardise the long-term supply of copper. If opposition grows, and supply stalls, then so too will the clean energy transition.
So what are the options?
As demand for copper moves into overdrive, we are at a crossroads.
One option is to support large-scale copper mining and the clean energy transition for the greater good of the planet. Miners would do their best to minimise impacts, but we’d accept there’ll be collateral damage for local communities. This is far from the latest commitment to “zero harm to people and the environment” that the world’s largest companies recently made to tailings management.
Read more: Renewables need land – and lots of it. That poses tricky questions for regional Australia
A second option is to insist miners exhaust all opportunities to avoid harm. This is because sacrificing the interests of local people in the interests of a greater good would not be considered responsible, as it does not align with the concepts of equity and fairness that underpin the Paris Agreement.
This second approach would require significant improvements in managing social and environmental impacts of copper mining. It may also mean reducing global demand for copper, finding substitutes, and making hard choices about not developing mines if the risks to local people and the environment are too high. Doing this would require a wholesale restructuring of the function of global commodity markets.
We may not yet have a solution, but as the world prepares for this year’s major Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, we must start to ask: what kind of justice are we seeking in the “just transition”, and for whom?
Read more: Why most Aboriginal people have little say over clean energy projects planned for their land
Deanna Kemp, Professor and Director, Centre for Social Responsibility in Mining, The University of Queensland; Eleonore Lebre, Research Fellow, Centre for Social Responsibility in Mining, The University of Queensland; John Owen, Professorial Research Fellow, The University of Queensland, and Richard K Valenta, Director – WH Bryan Mining and Geology Research Centre – The Sustainable Minerals Institute, The University of Queensland
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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“Copper is critical for solar panels”
…
Nope, flat out wrong. You can use aluminum for the wires.
You can, but they’ll be bulkier
re: “You can use aluminum for the wires.”
The application may be ‘interconnect’ *within* solar cells and/or the panels themselves (IDK), and if so then other factors such as coefficient of expansion of Al vs Cu may affect quite adversely the lifetime of a panel exposed to wide temperature swings as encountered in an ‘outdoor’ environment, and especially when placed purposely in view of strong solar radiation.
I cringe everytime laymen write an alarming blurb about one of the most poorly known industries outside of the immediate industry circles. They also tend to be clueless about even basic economics. This marks them as coming from social ‘science’ which was taken prisoner by the marxbrothers about 6 or 7 decades ago.
USGS 2015 study on ‘undiscovered copper’
“The results of the assessment indicate that a mean of at least 3,500 million metric tons (Mt) of undiscovered copper associated with these (two) deposit types may exist worldwide, exceeding the 2,100 Mt of identified copper resources tabulated for these deposit types.”
Annual copper demand is presently a mere ~ 28M metric tons, one third of which is sourced from recycling (know ye, that almost every ton of base and precious metals that has been mined since antiquity is sitting on the earths surface. Your wedding rings will contain some tiny portion of the gold mined a few millennia ago in
Ghana (The Gold Coast) and brought by caravan across the much greener Sahara – we never threw such valuable materials away).
So, newly mined copper is some 19Mtpa. Stack this against 2.1Bt in measured resources and the conservatively estimated 3.5Bt of geologically estimated resources (the two types referred to supply less than half of demand).
5,600M/20M is 280yrs of present day’s demand for new copper. I’m confident there is actually multiples of this figure to be found. And No! girls, grade is percentage of recoverable copper measured in a deposit. And No! Porphyry Copper deposits are at the surface and amenable to open pit mining. Strata-bound ones to be found are by and large at similar depths to existing projects. Deeper ores are easily mined and indeed have a much smaller environmental footprint.
All the stuff in this totally useless paper is researched from the marxbrothers’ imaginings of what a mineral deposit is like. It is obvious no real geologist or mining engineer was disturbed in this research.
Gary,
Please lay off the Marx Brothers! Theirs is the ONLY kind of Marxism that has ever worked!
As the old saying goes: you can’t make an omlet without breaking eggs. With all the opposition in the world, the price of copper will get so high that someone will eventually crack.
re: “the price of copper will get so high that someone will eventually crack.”
Who was it that famously said “The cure for high prices is, high prices.” meaning someone with ingenuity will ‘plonk out’ those undiscovered resources SINCE he has financial incentive to do so …
https://duckduckgo.com/?t=palemoon&q=“The+cure+for+high+prices+is%2C+high+prices.”&ia=web
I can’t wait to see the first copper smelter powered by pinwheels and sunshine (but I won’t hold my breath while waiting).
The Chou Bai-Dan Administration’s Department of Energy will undoubtedly provide a combination of investment and 100% non-recourse loan for its construction based on the strong recommendations of Environmental Science and Art History majors now in charge.
WE NEED GOLD to make the climate trophies they award each other. Gore…Kerry…etc
Add copper to the list of inflation sources that don’t count at the Fed. They have enormous capacity to ignore the list until it’s somebody else’s problem.
There is a big disconnect between academics at the University of Queensland and Queensland’s mining communities
As before, mining is demonized using 18th century mining abuses as common to modern mines in civilized countries.
Totally forgotten are the reams and reams of mining regulations preventing/protecting wildlife, citizens, water supplies from those long ag historical abuses.
More virtue signaling from ignorant leftist elites.
…especially by Chinese owned companies operating in third world countries….
They dont need no bleeding heart liberal regulatory frameworks, the US can copulate with itself while they copulate the local population, who are glad of the job because it is actually a longer, and economically less deprived life, even with the pollution…
I’m sure the Chinese will work the problem while Biden and the EU ignore it as long as they can.
It is amusing but tragic to meet these academic paper pushers trying to tell exploration professionals how to do their jobs. Their advice is mostly wrong or pointless.
In the 1980s I was Chief Geochemist for a company that found 4 new porphyry copper mines, now exhausted and being reclaimed. They were near Parkes in the middle of New South Wales, under flat wheat fields and showing very little signal at the surface. Only the distribution of Nature will prevent such new mines again and again. Nothing confines them to difficult places.
Mining industry people do not regard copper as a difficult environmental hazard. The hospital morgues of the world are not filled with victims.
One of the biggest impediments to mining by professionals who are steeped in the technology is the industry-scale opposition to seemingly all mining everywhere by ignorant groups of activists.
In Australia, we have numerous hurdles to jump, usually costing significant dollars, before a new mine starts. Not uncommonly, the basis is so-called aboriginal land rights whereby some 3% of the population is allowed to dictate terms of approval and inevitable compensation. Not bad for a special interst group who 100 years ago could hardly read or write.
It is the result of pressure groups backed by ideas and cash, much from lawyers, who see a profit in stirring up the masses. In reality, a new mine in an area with traditional aborigines will be a benefit in every sense except the imagined sense of “other people interfering with the virginity of our land since time began” type arguments. These have no place in the better educated world of today. They are largely state-approved extortion.
Books could be written aout the tactics of activists opposed to uranium mining after my company discovered the Ranger uraium deposits.
The authors of this academic article typify how sticking your nose into the business of other people can be twisted into employment and income. It is time that people considered doing something that benefits all of a country, not just their own greedy careers. Geoff S
They are experts on the subject now that they have written this article; plus the PHDs
“Not uncommonly, the basis is so-called aboriginal land rights whereby some 3% of the population is allowed to dictate terms of approval and inevitable compensation. Not bad for a special interst group who 100 years ago could hardly read or write.
Mmm, “so-called” rights.
“So-called” land owners who didn’t speak the invader’s language don’t deserve justice from those who are obviously their superiors? Wow, so that was the attitude of miners back in the early part of last century? Haven’t we come a long way since then.
You imagine a lot, but let’s not speculate. So far they can be compensated as Australia still has a functioning economy, but when the green/Marxist paradise will have arrived I’m not so sure that will happen anymore
Native Americans did not have the concept of private ownership of land. They only enforced a collective ownership of hunting grounds, which they often had to defend against other tribes. Sometimes one tribe would displace another tribe already living there.
Did Australian aborigines have a concept of “mineral rights” or even private ownership of individual plots of land?
Who cares? If they weren’t irradicated they were rounded up and placed in concentration camps where if they neglected to read about and lobby for their “mineral rights” and um, yeah “ownership” of their own land, then thats on them. Seems it still is.
Loydo.
Please do some research before shooting off with uninformed opinion (and then cease anyhow).
I was very heavily involved in the topic of Aboriginal Affairs at the level of federal Government policy input. Were you? Geoff S
Poor loy-dodo..
…. all that deep-seated grovelling leftist victimisation apology that you have in your life…
But you make the most of all the benefits don’t you, hypocritical SJW.
Most civilized societies have a form of ex post facto protection to prevent someone from being prosecuted and punished for doing something that was not illegal at the time it was done.
For symmetry, a person or group should not be able to sue to claim real estate or property rights that they did not lay claim to before Europeans arrived, and demonstrated that below-surface minerals have value. Actually, without the technology introduced by the Europeans, the minerals still would not have value to the Aborigines. It is the knowledge, technological skill, and transportation introduced by Europeans that converted land only suitable for subsistence hunter-gatherers, which created value. The Aborigines are usurping the cultural values introduced by Europeans and attempting to be paid for something they didn’t invent.
Clyde,
No, not in any case I investigated. Geoff S
.
You certainly haven’t ..
Your mind still locked in the Dark Ages,
… uneducated and deluded by superstition and AGW cult fear.
“If opposition grows, and supply stalls, then so too will the clean energy transition” Personally I am more concerned about the availability of copper with no regard to clean energy. The push to try and depend on that for 100% of our energy is a fools errand.
In a major victory for environmentalists, the major copper producers have agreed that all copper needed to support solar panels, wind turbines, electric vehicles and battery storage will be mined, refined and transported using only renewable energy.
OK, they haven’t agreed yet. But if they did agree, guess how many solar panels, wind turbines, electric vehicles and battery storage would get made. Or, if you prefer, how much it would cost tax-payers to get them made.
There’s good chance that a solar panel will not produce enough power to mine the copper needed for its construction. Net zero? My left foot.
It will take all human endeavour to extract energy for human energy needs from wind and solar intermittent germinators. These devices use one to two orders of magnitude more resources than thermal generators. They represent a huge impost on human existence.
This paper shines a light on why large mining companies are so supportive the “renewable” energy push. They stand to inherit the globe. They will command all human enterprise because they will be at the tight end of the supply chain.
“Long-term investment certainty remains reliant on appropriate market reforms and forward-looking policies that incentivise new, flexible technologies that are needed to complement renewables,”
Study backs batteries for power peaks (msn.com)
All these mere technicalities just need incentivising like their spruikers.
Pretending that CO2 is dirty….
It is the most benign compound on the planet, the beginning of the food chain for all life on earth, right up there with H2O, and currently at near starvation levels.
At least the Chinese will still be burning coal. There is a small chance that extra CO2 will be able to significantly offset the global cooling effect from the period of low solar activity that it looks like we are in for, but the plant fertilization effect will certainly be very helpful.
Altogether a clear net benefit. If anything we should be subsidizing CO2 release into the atmosphere, not deterring it.
I used to mine copper back in the day (also Uranium, Gold and Silver).
(actually I worked for an engineering company directly supporting a copper/uranium/gold/silver mine by maintaining and expanding mine infrastructure, but tomato tomatoe.)
We processed on site. Fun stuff. LOTS of fun chemicals and LOTS of electricity. About as renewable as toilet paper and ‘sustainable’ as a pyramid investment scheme.
So much angst over environmental problems from possible future copper mining…
…none at all over the massive pollution already extant and continuing in the USA – e.g from phosphate extraction in Florida.
and if fossil fuel is going to electrify the developing world, it would do it entirely without copper?
The extraction rates would be similar to what they are now,; no need to accelerate them to cover for EVs and PVs
Copper prices over the last 60 years do not appear to be as flat as stated in the paper. Just over the last ten years the price of copper has varied from $2.00 per pound to $4.50. And the price dipped below $1 per pound back in 2000. As the other posters have noted, there are plenty of copper deposits that can be economically developed, the issue is government interference via permits or declaring that area a wilderness area.
You might want to adjust for inflation and economic cycles. Part of the real growth was China going large in the global economy.
The benefits of switching to clean energy are huge
===============================
Karma, Newton’s Third Law, The Law of Unintended Consequences.
They all tell us that switching to clean energy, if it does have a huge benefits, it will also have a huge costs.
We see this in every market, where governments seek to artificially increase prices or reduce availability. A criminal enterprise will develop to take advantage of the artificial price gap.
Given the size of the energy market, the energy mafia will grow to dwarf economically many of the nations of the world, with corrupting effects far in excess of what we see with the drug mafia.
Scientists have just discovered the secret of limitless energy without carbon (or maybe just a few pounds)
Salute!
What about using silver as they did in WW2?
Gums asks…
We must destroy the World to save the World.