Essay by Eric Worrall
It seems a pity nobody ran some numbers BEFORE making promises and spending billions on an energy transition which we don’t have the resources to make happen.
Copper shortage keep green energy, tech ventures grounded
Copper the balloon popper for 2050 net-zero goals according to S&P
Brandon Vigliarolo
Fri 15 Jul 2022 // 17:00 UTC…
Copper is so central to transitioning from fossil fuels to sustainable energy, says a report from S&P Global, that worldwide demand is likely to double by 2035 from 25 million metric tons to 50; no matter the scenario, S&P said it’s unlikely the world will be able to meet it.
“The record-high level of demand would be sustained and continue to grow to 53 million metric tons in 2050 – more than all the copper consumed in the world between 1900 and 2021,” S&P Global said.
From oil to minerals
In a 2021 report, the International Energy Agency (IEA) described a new energy paradigm slowly replacing fossil fuels – minerals, the most important being copper.
…
Internal combustion vehicles of all sizes have around 24 kilograms of copper in their powertrains, the report’s data shows. Swapping internal combustion for fuel cells leads to a slight increase in copper, but swapping fuel cells for batteries is where things start to really scale up. A light duty battery-powered EV (BEV) powertrain requires 60kg of copper. A medium-duty BEV requires 139kg, while a heavy-duty BEV needs a whopping 425kg of copper.
The obvious solution to this inevitable problem would be to open more copper mines. That would definitely help offset coming shortages, but the catch is that those offsets would come too late.
“It currently takes 16 years, on average, to develop a new mine, meaning that a new mine seeking permission today would not become productive in time to accommodate the demand spike,” S&P said, quoting an IEA study.
Substitution of other metals – like aluminum – and recycling of copper reportedly won’t be enough to meet projected demand either, S&P’s data shows.
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Read more: https://www.theregister.com/2022/07/15/netzero_emissions_copper/
The S&P report is available here. The first key finding in the executive summary pretty much says it all; “Copper—the “metal of electrification”—is essential to all energy transition plans. But the potential supply-demand gap is expected to be very large as the transition proceeds. Substitution and recycling will not be enough to meet the demands of electric vehicles (EVs), power infrastructure, and renewable generation. Unless massive new supply comes online in a timely way, the goal of Net-Zero Emissions by 2050 will be short-circuited and remain out of reach.“
Obviously it is possible some unexpected advance will dramatically increase copper availability, in the same sense it is possible I’ll win the lottery. But I’m not holding my breath waiting for either event.
So…. “Net Zero” is viable, it’s those darned shortages that are causing it to fail. So, it’s not “real” net zero. Riiiight….
Right.
Watch – I say **watch** for the definition of “net zero” to change the way the definition of “vaccine” changed over the last few years (in order to “meet goals”; can you say “Mission Accomplished” while aboard an aircraft carrier with that banner splashed across it?)
While not particularly fond of “W”, I will point out that the “Mission Accomplished” banner was put up by the ship, for the ship’s crew, upon returning to port after a successful mission. Somehow people transformed a single aircraft carrier mission into the whole armed conflict and assumed that “W” was claiming that the whole thing was over. It was more like the first stage of the Tour de France. Yes it’s over, but tomorrow you have to get back on the bike.
The Leftwing Media completely misrepresented “Mission Accomplished”. Like they do everything else when it comes to Republicans and conservaties.
Eric, almost every article I read on mineral resource availability is grossly wrong (I have corrected copper before). I can tell an amateur study by such remarks as
“…grow to 53 million metric tons in 2050 – more than all the copper consumed in the world between 1900 and 2021,” S&P Global said.”
First, 35% of copper consumed is recycled copper, which means that a fair proportion of copper consumed is consumed every year.
Second, the USGS (the best mineral commodity source in the world) reported that existing mines contained resources of 1.6 billion MT in 2015 we apparently need another 25 million MT by 2035. They also did a study based on favorable geology in regions known for their copper mining, estimating 3.5 billion MT yet undiscovered. I have no doubt that we are seeing the beginning of the end of the whole marxist-climate shiteree for other reasons. The mining industry won’t be the bottleneck whatever happens.
On my cell phone I didnt mess with pdf links, but, anyone interested can Google USGS Mineral statistics for their excellent full info preprints for their Annual Minerals Yearbooks. For good summaries they publish up to date 2-3 page annual world summaries.
I have been threatening to do an article on mineral resources for WUWT for quite a while. I’m not doing an awful lot lot these days, but in my 80s it seems to me I’m busy!
Typo: A fair proportion of copper consumed is reconsumed each year
S&P are claiming recycling is not enough.
One thing I find fascinating about the climate “emergency” is nobody on the inside seems to treat it like an emergency. I mean if there was an alien invasion and we needed a lot of copper in a hurry to beat them people would be levelling mountains with nukes to get at the copper inside. Yet the alleged climate crisis, nothing has changed – the permitting process for mines to obtain required minerals is still as ridiculous as it has ever been.
No, recycling isnt enough, but 1.6 billion tons in known deposits is 65 times the forecast added 25 million tons! The mining industry wont be the bottleneck.
I read something similar only a few years ago. Someone, can’t remember who, calculated that if the UK (just the UK, Ma’am), suddenly switched to wholly electric cars, it would require about a decade or so of the world’s entire current copper production.
Ain’t gonna happen.
But investing in metals still might be a good long term idea. (I am not not qualified to give financial advice. Only to identify idiots when I see, hear, and read them).
And consider that copper is more than twice as plentiful as cobalt or any of the other EV components. There just isn’t enough accessible to replace every ICE car with an EV.
The paper ‘Mining our green future’ by Prof Richard Herrington, Dept of Earth Sciences, The Natural History Museum, London published in Nature Reviews calculated that
“To switch the UK’s fleet of 31.3m ICEVs to battery electric vehicles (BEVs) it would take an estimated 207,000 tonnes of cobalt, 264,000 tonnes lithium carbonate, 7200 tonnes neodymium and dysprosium, and 2,362,500 tonnes copper”
“This amount is twice the current annual world production of cobalt, an entire years world production of neodymium and three quarters of the world production of lithium”
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41578-021=00325-9
Exactly, how can it be sustainable if you can’t get it?. And doesn’t work as needed?
It’s in the definition … someone let Nick Stokes in and look what happened.
How ironic to waste copper (and all the other metals, petroleum products, birds and Balsa trees) on virtual trinkets of energy production and transportation which never reproduce the energy required to make them and become recyclable materials in a geological microsecond.
Green power is only as sustainable as the voracious consumption of the materials that comprise (and compromise) its very existence.
One word, “asteroids”.
How does one get to asteroids in a net zero way?
Two words – “Nickel-Iron”. Most asteroids are rock, a few are rock/ice and a few are nickel-iron rich rock. I’ve never come across references to copper on asteroids. Whups – further research shows that copper is indeed a feature; trace amounts of copper may sometimes be found in the nickel-iron deposits. So, trace amounts from a minority of asteroids – quite the treasure trove then.
The copper is only part of the problem. It must smelted and drawn into wire then spun into the correct sizes. To do this in the time frame required will probably necessitate new manufacturing plants.
THEN, the wire must be wound on transformer iron in the correct shape and size plus enclosures, insulators, and miscellaneous hardware. Distribution cable must be insulated. Newer high voltage lines will need larger insulators, with wider spacing on cross arms, new switches and fuse mechanisms. None of this has even been ordered.
This is all a joke and will come crashing down at some point. I have managed some pretty large projects with lots of little pieces. Anyone who thinks the government, Congress or Executive, has the expertise and wherewithal to know where to start is living down a rabbit hole along with Alice!
if you think the blame game being played by the Biden administration is fanciful right now, just wait and see who gets blamed for the upcoming mess. Anyone want to bet that us ordinary citizens won’t receive the lions share of blame for not doing enough?
Almost all copper produced today comes from low-grade porphyry deposits in granitic rocks. It requires huge amounts of energy to obtain the copper, because most of what is excavated is waste rock. Below is a view of the Kennecott open-pit mine in Bingham Canyon, near Salt Lake City. For perspective, the benches are about 40′ high, and the haul trucks have tires >8′ in diameter. See if you can spot any.
Copper mining does considerable environmental damage, raises concerns about ground-water pollution, and it is questionable that trucks of current size or larger can be run off batteries. Therefore, the prospect of ramping up production to meet the increased demand for copper, is not good.
There was a proposal to use gravity to keep trucks topped off, so for example if the trucks were mostly transporting loads downhill, from an elevated pit, in principle the potential energy extracted from carrying the load downhill would be enough to keep the battery topped up indefinitely. Not sure how practical this is though w/r to real world mine sites.
If you believe in perpetual motion machines, then ‘obviously’ the plan will work. However, in the real world, where loaded trucks have to climb a hill, and the empty trucks will go back down, and there will be losses from mechanical friction and flexing of the tires, I think that, at best, it can be used to supplement chargers and reduce the inevitable charging time. An unknown is what the constant charging and dis-charging will do to the longevity of the batteries. One reason that open-pit mines are used is the economics. Battery-powered trucks will undoubtedly change the economics. Somebody needs to do the detailed analysis before we get to the point of no return.
Agreed, its a bit far fetched.
And they have some byproducts of interest.
Rio Tinto to build new tellurium plant at Kennecott mine
Molybdenum is a big byproduct of many copper mines. Much in demand for high temperature alloys and oil cracking catalysts. (Strangely, also for fertilizers applied to cauliflower fields.)
Rhenium, another byproduct, is valued for much the same reasons. At ~1ppb, it would never be mined for itself, even at a price around $1,500/kilogram. But it pretty much falls out into your hands when you process certain copper ores.
Bingham Canyon used to use an electric rwy.
This is just one of very many reasons why net zero will not happen by 2050.
It is a fantasy held by technically illiterate politicians and political advisors.
makes me grin
and
the warmists hate mines cos Co2 fuel etc
rather funny
According to a youtube video posted recently by an EV owner & enthusiast, there’s been an outbreak of thefts of copper cables from EV charging points in the north of England. In one case a car had been left to charge overnight at a dealership, and the cable was cut out between the charger and the car – the battery was fully charged when this happened so charging had stopped; the severed connector was left locked to the car. Repair costs to the charger were said to dwarf the value of the stolen copper.
The sad thing is that for most of these resource type thefts, the cost of repairs is many times greater than the value of what was stolen.
Even if they just steal a roll of cable that was just laying on the ground. The value of the cable, as a cable, is many times the value of the raw copper in the cable.
The conclusion of this report is correct, the increase in required copper for EV’s, and wiring infrastructure to power the chargers for said EV’s is not sustainable. However I challenge some of the numbers used.
Modern ICE powered passenger cars (excluding hybrids) do NOT have 53 pounds of copper “in the drivetrain”. The drivetrain comprises the engine, transmission, differential(s), drive shaft(s), axles and wheels/brakes. Some copper or brass is used in bushings or seals in these components, and a small amount is used in various sensors and in the ignition coils and/or spark plug wires. Let’s put the direct drivetrain copper at 2 lbs.
Most of the copper in an ICE vehicle is in the main wiring loom, and in the ancillary components such as starter motor, alternator, blower motor, wiper motors. Main wiring loom is approximately 5 pounds (I work as an automotive repair tech, and have direct tactile experience with each of these, along with the entire drivetrain)
Starter motor and starting cables are another 5 lbs of Cu. Alternator and blower and wiper motors – 5-7 lbs.
So we have 2 (drivetrain) + 5 (main loom) + 5 (starting) + 7 (remaining motors) = 19 lbs or 8.62 kg of Cu. Lets throw in +25% for contingency, that yields 23.75 lbs (10.78 kg).
Now let’s view a pure electric passenger car:
It still requires the main loom, and the ancillary motors – in fact it requires more than an ICE, because it must have a separate electric motor to drive the air conditioning compressor, and it must have a separate motor for power steering pump, both of which in an ICE are belt drive off the engine. It does not require a starter motor, but the extra motors for A/C and Power Steering, and for brake boosting (ICE engine uses engine vacuum for brake boosting, so an EV either needs a vacuum pump motor, or a bigger power steering pump/motor to provide hydraulic brake boosting) far outweigh the missing starter motor.
And all those extra motors and controls and the drive motor controller, adds to the main loom, approximately doubling it’s weight to 10 lbs.
Then there is the main drive “train” motor or motors. At least 100 to 150 lbs of Cu needed there, and the cabling to deliver the many hundreds of Amps at hundreds of volts, well add another 20 lbs there.
So the EV stacks up as follows:
Drive Train motors 150 lbs
drive train cabling 20 lbs
Ancillary motors 15 lbs
main loom 10 lbs
Total 195 lbs (88.48 kg)
So EV’s need roughly 8 times more Copper than does an Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) powered passenger vehicle.
As I said, the report reaches the correct conclusion on the ratio of Cu needed for electrification of passenger transportation, but the specific numbers are faulty.
Most of the weight an electric motor is the copper windings, and these motors weigh much more than 2 pounds.
Mark W needs to check on some electric motor 101 material! No Mark, most of the weight in almost every electric motor type, is the steel of the armature/rotor and the steel of the stator.
When is the last time you changed a starter motor, or a blower motor, or an alternator in a car? Have you ever taken one apart? How about the last time you designed and built an electric motor from scratch, including laser cutting the rotor and stator steel sheets, and winding the coils?
I have done all of these things, many, many times. Before semi retiring and doing automotive repair to stay active, I ran an R&D lab designing and testing electric motors and generators.
Have a look at the following cutaway of an automotive alternator:
https://www.123rf.com/photo_68019041_automotive-alternator-cross-section-isolated-on-white-background.html
Now the rotor and stator cores are in fact steel, as is the shaft and bearings. the outer case is aluminum, and the copper wire is visible. Breaking down the ratio of the areas and deriving the volume of each materials is as follows:
Steel – bearings/shaft 2 units of volume
– rotor 3 units
– stator 3 units
Total Steel = 8 units of volume, steel density 7.8 , steel mass = 62.4 units of mass
Cu is 2.5 units of volume, Cu density is 8.9, so Cu mass is 22.25 units of mass
Al is 3.5 units of volume, Al density being 2.7 so Al mass is 9.45. units of mass
Clearly the most mass comes from the steel.
Starter motor is similar ratio of steel to copper, and small actuator motors like for cabin air flow, or windshield wipers have lower fraction of Cu to steel, and have an order of magnitude less Cu. you can pick up a blower or wiper motor with one finger, however you need both hands unless you are a gorrilla to lift either an alternator or starter motor.
the notion there is 52 lbs of Cu in an ICE only car is nonsense!
“you can pick up a blower or wiper motor with one finger, however you need both hands unless you are a gorrilla to lift either an alternator or starter motor.”
Malarky. I can’t tell you how many car, tractor, and semi-tractor starters and alternators I have installed in my past life as a mechanic. BY MYSELF, no gorilla assistant! And I have undercut the rotors in things like generators – without tools using a broken piston ring to remove the carbon buildup, so I do know how to take one apart and fix it AND put it back together again.
Attached is a cutaway of an EV drive motor and a typical dc motor. There is a huge amount of copper in the motor itself. The steel part of the load comes from the cores (as you note), the mounting shell and and involved gears (if any) in the motor.
Mark is correct, however. EV’s do have much more weight in copper than do ICE vehicles due to the increased size of the motors and ancillary equipment involved.
The Demprogs plan is to order out like everything else while forcing the transition ever onward with no delays allowed.
Tesla’s Chinese Battery Maker Is Scoping Out Factory Sites in Mexico (yahoo.com)
Aluminum is the third most abundant element in the earth’s crust, but unfortunately it cannot substitute for copper in many places. In the 1970s they tried wiring homes with aluminum and many of them had house fires because aluminum junctions with other metals are not electrically stable.
There’s another problem with the transition from fossil fuels to unicorn farts that no one likes to talk about. Homes and businesses that are heated by oil or natgas will be forced to switch to electric heat. This means the electric grid will experience the same strain in the middle of winter that it does in the middle of summer when everyone runs their air conditioners.
Is the Obiden crowd ready to address a sagging national electric grid? (Answer: of course not … they have backup generators fired by the same fuels they want to ban for the rest of us.)
Maybe slave labor can help the US and EU achieve net zero.
Chinese Lithium Giant Pulls EVs Deeper Into Forced Labor Glare (yahoo.com)
Bought some heavy duty jumper cables because the wire was much cheaper than bulk copper cables. Only to discover the wire was copper clad aluminum. Now know what CCA label means.
Testing with ohm meter shows CCA is not equivalent.
“Resistance is futile.” Couldn’t resist!
And easily overlooked with jumper cables because the battery has a CCA (cold crank amps) number.
So glad the smart people thought this through before moving us back to the stone age.
My son the electrician laughs when we discuss the green revolution, he says this will create more winners and losers than ever before. Sounds like he may be right
Obviously! These nett zero/climate change idiots have forgotten to ask engineers, and particularly mining engineers, if their wacky dream is at all possible. Apart from needing to increase copper production for electric vehicles, more copper (and aluminium) is needed for new transmission lines, copper for car chargers, copper for new wiring in houses and apartments, etc. And then there are the other metals that are in the same box. How much more lithium? I read in the past week that Bolivia is planning to help the world out by producing 40% of the world’s lithium by 2030. A great lot of good Bolivia will be. Its spent nearly US$1B in the past +10 years to so far produce 500 tonnes of LiCO3 per annum and some fertiliser. And then there is the forgotten metal – TIN. Although it is used in very tiny amounts in everything electric, including electric vehicles, its usage in electric vehicles is about twice that in a ICE vehicle. Mined tin production has been in deficit for years. If it weren’t for scrap recycling then there would have been a tin catastrophe years ago. And no, tin can’t be substituted. There are just a few potential new tin mines on the drawing boards. No where near enough to fulfil this stupid pipe dream. And I’m sure the same can be said for nickel and cobalt. Absolute bloody morons. Nothing can be planned or constructed without engineers, and all the idiot politicians and bureaucrats all over the world (including Australia but except China I suspect) have forgotten to ask the engineers if it is possible.