Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
There’s been a lot of talk lately about how the scarcity of “rare-earth” minerals like lithium and cobalt will short-circuit the “green revolution”. In that regard, I came across an interesting 2022 Standard & Poors Global (SP Global) study on the amount of plain old everyday copper needed for a Net-Zero 2050 scenario. The study is entitled “The Future of Copper: Will the looming supply gap short-circuit the energy transition?“, and the answer is … yep. It will.
In my post “Bright Green Impossibilities” I listed a number of physical, political, and economic reasons why we can’t get to “Net-Zero” CO2 emissions by 2050. This post is about one reason that I didn’t mention in that post.
The problem is that copper is the material most suitable in most conditions for conducting electricity … and in addition, it’s used in building construction, appliances, electrical equipment, brass hardware, and cell phones, as well as expanding applications in communications, data processing, and storage.
[UPDATE: As several commenters have mentioned, aluminum is replacing copper for the transmission of electricity at high voltages (generally over 480V.) However, copper is still used for to-the-home and in-home wiring, as well as all the other uses listed above. And the numbers in the linked study and in the graphic below are unchanged.]
So if we’re going to go to an all-electric world, we’re going to need a truly massive amount of copper.
How much? Well, according to “The Future of Copper” linked above, here’s the bad news:
Figure 1. Estimates of the amount of copper needed to achieve Net-Zero 2050.
No bueno.
And as they say on the TV, “But wait, there’s more!” The USGS estimates that there are 880 million tonnes of recoverable copper in the ground. And here’s how that compares to the cumulative copper needs shown in Figure 1.
Figure 2. Cumulative amount of copper required for Net-Zero 2050 per Figure 1, and known recoverable copper reserves using current technology.
So … by 2040 we’ll need about all the proven reserves of copper we’ve currently located in the ground, and we’re still nowhere near Net-Zero 2050. We’re likely to find more in the ground, which will allow for further recoverable reserves. But it will generally be very poor ore and expensive to mine. “Back in the day”, as they say, ores which were 4% or even 6% copper were not uncommon. But newly discovered ores are on the order of 0.1% copper. Of course, as it becomes more scarce it will become more expensive, allowing poorer ores to be economically viable … but that leads to another problem.
The current London Metal Exchange price for copper is about ten thousand dollars per tonne. So the copper necessary for Net-Zero will cost a minimum of fourteen trillion dollars at current prices. However, as noted immediately above, as copper becomes more scarce the prices will inevitably rise. So the likely total cost will be at least fifty percent higher or even more, call it a minimum of twenty trillion dollars …
And that’s just for the smelted copper. It doesn’t include turning the copper into electrical wiring with insulation, transporting the wire and other copper products to where they’re going to be used, installing the new transmission lines, substations, switching gear, generators, and all the other costs to get the global electrical grid up to what would be required for an all-electrical world. Top consulting firm McKinsey says:
Our analysis of the industry-standard scenario for net zero by 2050 suggests that about $275 trillion in cumulative spending on physical assets, or approximately $9.2 trillion per year, would be needed between 2021 and 2050.
That means we’d have to spend $25 billion each and every day, including weekends, until 2050. Starting tomorrow. Riiight … full McKinsey article here.
And expanding any kind of mining faces a host of political, environmental, and regulatory problems. It can easily take ten years and billions of dollars before the first shovel goes into the ground. Opposition from “greens” has stopped almost all new mining in the US … while at the same time, those geniuses clamor for an end to fossil fuels.
A final difficulty factor. Much of the copper ore, and the majority of the refining and smelting facilities, are in … yep … China. From the linked study:
The challenge will be compounded by increasingly complex global geopolitical, trade, and country-level risk environments. There are several dynamics that will have a particular bearing on copper access. China holds a preeminent position in copper smelting (47%), refining (42%), and usage (54%), in addition to its sizable position in production, making it the epicenter of world copper. Continued trade tensions and other forms of competition between the United States and China could affect the copper market going forward. Supply chain resilience has emerged as a strategic imperative, particularly after the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine. The study finds that by 2035 the United States will be importing between 57% and 67%—that is up to two-thirds—of its copper needs. An intensifying competition for critical metals is very likely to have geopolitical implications.
And if you think the Chines won’t play those “geopolitical implications” to their advantage, you don’t understand our Eastern friends.
So can we please stop this Net-Zero nonsense? It’s an impossible goal that will not solve an imaginary problem, and it will bankrupt us all, cause widespread energy poverty, and shaft the poor in the process.
Best to everyone on a lovely winter day,
w.
As Is My Wont: I can defend my words. I can’t defend others’ interpretations of my words. So when you comment, please quote the exact words you are discussing.
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The feed to my house from the pole was just replaced. It was 1952 all-Copper. The new feed wires are all aluminum.
Once again as others have pointed out, problems that have no other solution have been confused with problems that do, but at a price.
Every metal is a conductor. The dominance of copper is a trade off between price, size weight and usability.
Aluminium was never widely available until advanced electrochemical means of refining it were introduced.
It is perfectly adequate for most electrical applications, and is in fact per unit weight a better conductor than copper.
Its downsides are that it’s bulkier, more inflammable, and more prone to corrosion problems.
Certainly in terms of e.g. electric aircraft, cars etc is is probably the superior metal to wind a motor with. HiFi loudspeakers have been wound with it for that reason. And you can increase the packing density by going to e.g square section wire, or a flat tape. And it’s a bitch to solder. I have done it, with highly corrosive lung crippling fluxes, but in production one would rather use spot welding, and a coating to prevent ingress of atmospheric oxygen into the join. The rise of massively integrated chips has to an extent reduced the need for copper connecting wires anyway..
Aluminium is one of the most abundant elements in the Earth’s crust. I will defer to where it’s most widely available and most abundant, but here in the UK we had a smelter bang next door to a nuclear power station. The new crop of SMRs – small modular reactors – are ideal to run a bauxite smelter and push the surplus energy onto a grid.
In this sense Aluminium is more ‘green’ than copper, because that uses coal to smelt, currently.
Outside of electrical engineering, its use in electronics is small, because of the size of the components.
In plumbing, the spiralling cost has already led to its replacement with various polymers for pipework, and the ease and speed of connecting plumbing with the use of O-ring seals and compression fittings has made it the de facto standard for new builds. Plumbing of course has the etymology of lead – plumbum in Latin – and that’s what the Romans used. Copper was a more Victorian adoption, and lead was also – and still is – the go-to material for e.g roofing. Copper looks wonderful, has some herbicidal qualities, but it is frightfully expensive. Zinc is being used as an alternative, as are specialised polymers.
Ah, I hear you say, but plastics come from oil, don’t they? Well yes, these days they do, but they are increasingly coming from organic sources. Ultimately most plastics are carbon and hydrogen, with a smattering of other elements thrown in to adjust their properties and almost any carbon feedstock – even things like milk! – can be used as a starting point. We used to use wood and coal to make plastics before oil got so cheap.
So there too, copper is not an issue, we can substitute other materials provided we have access to cheap abundant reliable energy.
Which is not the case with ‘renewables’.
I am a fully qualified engineer, with a specialisation in matters electrical, and a good knowledge of the rest of the field, and unlike many here I am NOT a Cornucopian. Whilst I have no confidence whatsoever that climate change analysis is being done by people with broad understanding or accurate models, I do understand that ultimately, until we can mine off planet, we are accessing a limited resource base in this planet of ours. Carbon emissions are not the crisis. Material and energy availability is. Britain was first in the game, and blew out its economic coal reserves in about 200 years. Iron and steel are the natural result of exploiting a massively common pair of elements – carbon and iron. When either runs short other materials take over. The USA is still resource rich, but that won’t last forever. Peak conventional oil has come and gone in the USA, its only the more expensive fracking technology that keeps the pumps rolling. At some point oil will become more expensive than uranium…and US dwellers will have noticed the price inflation at te gas pump forecourt.
So we have to look at what works and how costly it is and how we can utilise it as materials we used to use become cost ineffective. You have no idea how expensive it is to thatch a roof with straw these days 🙂
Ultimately plenty of alternatives exist, but the resultant materials are always representative of manufacturing cost. Many, like aluminium and titanium, are extremely energy intensive, and expensive energy makes them unaffordable.
So the key to having the ability to transition to new materials and technologies as existing materials run out is access to massive quantities of cheap reliable energy.
Windmills and solar panels ain’t it. As an engineer this is fundamentally unquestionable fact. And I am not the only engineer.
So people at the top know all this is is simple climateBollocks. The question is why they persist with it.
In the end, the Western world will end up with almost 100% nuclear power, after, as Churchill put it, they have exhausted every other alternative.
Nuclear power gives us access to enormous quantities of cheap energy and is the key to unlocking otherwise expensive metals and other minerals and ultimately to the synthesis of almost any hydrocarbon we want from any carbon rich feedstock we can lay our hands on. Up to and including atmospheric carbon dioxide, if we needed to.
There are other more urgent shortages than copper – the first is energy, but the solution exists. We just have to use it. The rare earths – whilst not actually rare – are still in short supply and China has monopolised the market by undercutting. Given Russia’s antics, this would seem to be something the West should address, and China will also have noted how Russia cannot gain access to high complexity digitral chips, any more than China can. The chip foundries are in Taiwan, Indonesia, Singapore, S Korea…
No, if I survey the industrial needs of civilisation from an engineering management perspective, I see two glaring issues. The first is cheap energy, and renewable energy stands in the way of widespread nuclear deployment. and the first nation to fully embrace nuclear and ditch renewables will rule the world. It may well be China.
The second is off grid energy. Nuclear power can feed all the electricity grids of civilisation, but batteries to store it in are simply not really available at the needed energy densities, nor is there any prospect of breaching the funadmental limits of their theoretical energy density.
Hydrocarbon fuels that combine with atmospheric oxygen that is abundant everywhere, are still and will remain top banana on energy density. Nothing else beats them. If we want to retain off grid land and air transport, we need hydrocarbons, and if we cant pump them we will have to synthesise them.
Obviously nuclear ships work, and electric trains running on pre-laid tracks. But cars trucks and airliners need hydrocarbons, as to tanks and armoured vehicles.. you can’t run a war off windmills and solar panels. Though you might run one off portable small reactors.
So those are the real issues. Not copper.
Primary copper smelting “uses coal to smelt, currently”? Not in my country, that I know of! 🙂
See site visit reports from M. Bahner
And in fact, in my country, coal is actually one of the ingredients for making the electrodes at primary aluminum smelters. (In my country, we call it “aluminum.”)
😉
You’ve been doing that for a while! Funny seeing the Phelps Dodge brand name, I haven’t heard that in years.
No, I haven’t been doing it for almost 30 years. I only did it for a couple years in the early 1990s, and then briefly in the mid-1990s. I was the project leader at Research Triangle Institute (now RTI, International) supporting the U.S. EPA Office of Air Quality Planning and Standards (OAQPS) in their development of the Primary Copper Smelting National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants (NESHAP).
Back then, there were seven primary copper smelters in the U.S.:
1) Copper Range Company Smelter in White Pine, MI (the Upper Pennisula).
2) ASARCO (American Smelting and Refining Company) smelter in El Paso, TX. .
3) Kennecott (later RTZ…and then I guess Rio Tinto) smelter outside Salt Lake City, UT.
4) Magma Copper in San Manuel, AZ.
5) Cyprus Miami in Claypool, AZ.
5) ASARCO in Hayden, AZ.
6) Phelps Dodge – Chino Mines in Hurley, NM, and
7) Phelps Dodge – Hidalgo at Playas, NM.
Unfortunately, I think only Cyprus Miami in AZ and Rio Tinto Kennecott in UT are still in business. But speaking of Phelps Dodge…the Phelps Dodge Hidalgo Smelter was the epitome of “in the middle of nowhere.”
I’m an engineer. I disagree.
“Ain’t it” compared to what?
Compared to nuclear plants that have already been constructed and have been running for decades?
Compared to fantasies of what nuclear power could cost, if only the pesky public and pesky regulators were removed from the equation?
Compared to what electricity from nuclear debacles like Virgil Summer Units 2 and 3 (which will likely produce not one kilowatt, and therefore will represent an infinite cost of electricity, given the approximately $10 billion spent on them)? Or perhaps Vogtle nuclear Units 3 and 4, which now are expected to cost more than $30 billion? Or perhaps you prefer the Hinkley Point nuclear plant, also with a cost over $30 billion?
So if you think that nuclear can’t cut the mustard, and I know that renewables cannot, what is your solution?
When people realise that bureaucracy is killing them because nuclear works and renewables do not, what will they do with the bureaucrats?
As I said I really AM an engineer. Human issues like regulations and what people believe I left out. I concentrated on what was technically and economically possible. A grid that does not supply enoough energy to reproduce itself when it wears out is not sustainable.
It is a fantasy.
.
Ukraine has shown Germany at least that Energiewende meant reliance on Russian oil and gas. And East German brown coal.
You know that those nuclear plants have been deliberately sabotaged by regulation.
But even at $30bn – which is a shade high – Hinkley point C still represents better value than windfarms
So if you think that nuclear can’t cut the mustard, and I know that renewables cannot, what is your solution?
Here was my prediction, compared to the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s (EIA’s) prediction in 2019, for electrical energy production in the United States. All values are in billions of gigawatt-hours annually:
Mark Bahner vs U.S. EIA (Dave Middleton and Dave Fair not reporting)
If you look at that, the EIA predicts photovoltaics will increase from 81 to 409 from 2017 to 2050. I predict the value in 2050 will be 1200.
The EIA predicts nuclear will decrease from 805 to 672 from 2017 to 2050. I predict the value in 2050 will be 140. Nuclear power will be almost dead in the U.S. by 2050. The EIA apparently doesn’t know it, but anyone who simply looks at the numbers for when the nuclear fleet was built will understand the incredible odds against a large majority of them still operating in 2050.
The EIA (hilariously! what a bunch of absolutely incompetent clowns!) predicts coal will decrease from 1209 to 938 from 2017 to 2050. I predict the value in 2050 will be 200. It is absolutely disgraceful that a whole team of people spending an entire year on something, *year after year*, can’t come up with better predictions than I can in under 20 hours of work.
The EIA predicts offshore wind will go from 0 to 0.2 from 2017 to 2050. Of all the absolutely mindless bullshit in the EIA’s projections, this is probably the most ridiculously inexcusable value. I predict *200* in 2050. So they predict 0 to 0.2, and I predict 0 to 200!
You can see the other predictions for natural gas, onshore wind, etc.
However, it’s important for you to understand that my predictions aren’t some “solution” to something. The are simply my guesses based on literally decades spent studying energy systems and their development paths. In 2050, solar will be a fairly distant second only to natural gas, in millions of gigawatt-hours generated in the U.S. On-shore wind will be third. Off-shore wind will be fourth. Coal will be fifth, and nuclear sixth.
Didn’t you tell me the other day that Australia should be using wind and solar and yet to be developed storage technology instead of even considering nuclear?
Sorry, that first sentence was a quote from you that I forgot to put in quotation marks. These are your words, not mine:
I responded with the way I see the electrical generation breakdown in the U.S. from 2017 to 2050. In 2019, the U.S. EIA predicted that nuclear would decline from 805 thousand GWh generated in 2017 to 672 thousand GWh in 2050. I predict U.S. nuclear will decline to 140 thousand GWh in 2050. I don’t see any way that plants built in the 1970s will still be running 70-80 years later.
You’re right, I told you that Australia should not even consider nuclear. There’s too much solar and natural gas in Australia to even consider nuclear.
The U.S. probably *should* consider nuclear–as opposed to onshore and offshore wind–but it won’t. Note that even for the U.S., the place to consider nuclear is in the northeast and northcentral portions of the country. But again, I don’t think the U.S. will go with nuclear at a rate to make up even for the nuclear plants that will be shuttered by 2050. I predict that, to 2050, nuclear power in the U.S. is a sinking industry…not even an industry that’s treading water.
That was Leo, not me. I didn’t notice you were quoting him, and thought that was yours.
That explains it.
Hi,
Sorry, I should have paid more attention to who was writing what. (I wondered why you didn’t seem to recognize what I thought were your own words. 😉 )
Again, sorry, my mistake.
There are lots of things written in lots of threads, so it’s easy to miss something, as we both did in this case.
I think it was storage rather than natural gas.
Agreed, some mixture of solar, wind, pumped hydro and natural gas should give the largest reduction in CO2 emissions until or unless some viable means of multi-day storage becomes available.
“I think it was storage rather than natural gas.”
Well, things are getting complicated here. I don’t think Australia, or the U.S., or Germany, or France, is going to get to 100% reliance on carbon-free electricity by 2050.
My point regarding Australia was not that Australia would be able to use just solar (and wind) and storage on their electrical grid by 2050. My point was that Australia would likely be better off choosing solar and attempting to develop long-term storage (e.g., iron-air batteries) than attempting to either develop it’s own nuclear power plant technology, or importing some nuclear technology from some other country.
I’m a really big fan of storage technology related to the grid. That’s because storage technologies can instantly go from being suppliers to the grid to being loads on the grid. That’s a real key in the development of photovoltaics in particular. In Australia and in the U.S. Southwest, photovoltaics provide a very inexpensive source of electricity, which is almost certainly going to get less and less expensive in the future. So a good strategy for Australia and the U.S. Southwest is to produce *more* electricity than is from noon to say 4 PM on hot summer days, and then try to store that electricity for a few hours to get to where loads are later in the night. Or even to store some overnight.
The demand provided by storage devices during the peak solar generation hours of circa noon to 3 PM avoids the “duck curve” that otherwise would occur if there is no “artificial” demand occurring:
Storage avoids the “duck curve” situation resulting from photovoltaic power
But, as I wrote, I don’t think any of those four countries is going to have a carbon-free electrical generation system by 2050. In fact, in the U.S., I expect more electricity from natural gas in 2050 than in 2023 (because coal is going to be nearly eliminated, and EVs are going to greatly increase electricity demand).
I don’t know enough about Australia other than to say I’d be surprised if the percentage of electricity from natural gas goes down from 2023 to 2050. My reasoning for Australia is basically the same…I think their generation from coal is going to go down significantly, and their EVs are going to increase electrical demand.
That seems quite likely.
A while ago, Nick Stokes pointed out the storage capacity of the Snowy Hydro 2 system. That’s equivalent to around 10 hours of demand, but the generating capacity probably isn’t sufficient to provide that amount of output.
Running down the pumped hydro overnight and refilling during the day, in conjunction with CCGT is probably the optimum mix.
Unless there is some great breakthrough in battery chemistry, multi-day battery storage seems to be coming about the same time as commercial fusion, though. There do seem to be some candidates, but they have a way to go.
I expect iron-air batteries with 100 hours of storage to be commercial within the next 3 years. I would be extremely surprised if fusion is commercial in the next 30 years.
Oops, I meant to include a link supporting the idea that iron-air batteries with multiday storage would be commercial within 3 years.
I hate articles like that, Mark. It’s a puff piece, a press release hagiography. It’s all about a battery that will put out 10 MW for 100 hours.
I live in a low-population county in California, less than half a million people. The average hourly energy consumption is 330 MW, double that for the peak.
Your whiz-bang battery puts out 10 MW, enough to power 3% of my county … unless it’s at peak demand.
The article also neglects to mention that the cost for that battery is claimed to be $20,000,000, although real-world prices are always higher.
Twenty megabucks to power 3% of the county?
Finally, the round-trip efficiency of the battery is a pathetic 40%, which means that ~ two-thirds of the energy you put in is wasted.
As with most of these “green” technologies, the only way they make sense is with huge taxpayer subsidies. And the US, stupidly, has just dedicated $350 million of your and my money to these boondoggles.
Color me unimpressed.
w.
Mark,
Would you like to comment on the case study of France nuclear?
Seems to many of us that political will, used to overcome obstacles, can produce a national system that is world best practice.
I do not do country forecasts of energy any more. They commonly lack realism because they do not include the major factor of political/bureaucratic interference in the path to common sense.
Geoff S
Yes, I’m very happy to do that. 🙂
First, a tiny bit of background about me. I worked for 3.5 years for the Babcock and Wilcox Nuclear Power Division in Lynchburg, VA, from 1982 to 1985. B&W designed the reactor “island” (that’s the reactor, steam generators, emergency core cooling systems, and some other things) at Three Mile Island (TMI). So when I came to work, B&W and others were working on modifications resulting from lessons learned from the meltdown at TMI (which was a B&W reactor…and more importantly, B&W steam generators). In fact, much of my work was for Crystal River 3 in Florida…another B&W plant with an unhappy ending. I tell all this, because my experience at B&W I think gives me insights that people who have never worked on nuclear power lack.
So…France and nuclear power…it’s a very different situation from the U.S. I’m not intimately familiar with their situation the way I am with the U.S. situation. But it appears that the French government–and presumably the people, since it’s a democracy–saw after the 1973 oil crisis that France doesn’t have a lot of options for power generation. No real resources of hydro, coal, or natural gas. So they decided to go “all in” on nuclear power. Very importantly, the nuclear plants were built by a single state-owned entity (EDF), rather than a variety of private companies, like in the U.S. If a country has the commitment of the government and the people, it’s possible to build inexpensive nuclear plants.
In the U.S. we do NOT have the commitment of the government or the people to nuclear power. And in my experienced and considered opinion, we NEVER WILL in my lifetime (which at this point I’m hoping will be at least another 30 years).
So to all the U.S. people who say, “Oh, look at France! We could do something like they did! It would be so wonderful!”…I say, “Nonsense. Live your life in the real world, not in a fantasy land.” (And I’m looking at you, Dave Middleton. ;-)) The U.S. is not France, and will never be France. There will never be widespread support for nuclear power in the U.S. (at least in the next 30+ years) because we have too many other options (natural gas, solar, wind).
I do country–and global–forecasts of energy all the time. And my forecasts don’t “lack realism” because I include “the major factor of political/bureaucratic interference in the path to common sense.”
For example, Dave Middleton looked at the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIAs) Annual Energy Outlooks for 2018 and 2019 and saw *no* U.S. offshore wind power all the way through 2050. He seemed to think that meant there actually would be no U.S. offshore wind power to 2050. That’s nonsense. There is going to be a tremendous amount of offshore windpower in the U.S. in 2050, because nearly all the state governments on the eastern seaboard support it…and the federal government doesn’t mind it either.
Look at all the U.S. offshore wind power that’s planned
Now, you might say, “Oh, we could get the same amount of electricity as from offshore wind power using small modular reactors (SMRs). That would be significantly less expensive. So we should forecast SMRs for the U.S. east coast.” That’s insane. That’s not forecasting. That’s dreaming.
Hi Willis:
It is a common misunderstanding that “reserves” is all there is; when we’ve used up the reserves we’re done. However “Reserves” is only the known amount that can be extracted legally and at a profit with current technology (the quote above even says about the current technology).
Tim Worstall (who was at one time “Mr Scandium” for the entire world) can explain this: “Reserves” is the bacon that you have in the refrigerator, ready for making breckfast. You won’t “run out” of bacon by the end of the week, even though you only have one pack, because you can go to the store and buy more. And the store won’t run out because farmers are busy breeding more hogs.
I’d thoroughly reccomend looking up “The No Breakfast Fallacy: Why the Club of Rome was wrong about us running out of resources” as an informative read and a great explainer.
As well as the “reserves” issue, there is also the ecconomics 101 concept of substitution. As copper becomes more scarce and expensive, other materials will be used instead (e.g. Aluminium as already mentioned), or the thing that needed copper will tend to be replaced by a thing that dosn’t (like zoom has reduced travel).
So, yes Net-Zero is a nonsense – just not realy for this reason.
But do keep up the good work 🙂
SBFC, as I said, proven reserves are “known recoverable copper reserves using current technology.”
This means copper reserves that a) we know where they are, b) that you can mine economically, c) using means we already have in hand.
It does NOT mean all the copper is, and I was quite careful to make that distinction because I knew if I didn’t, someone like you would foolishly think I was ignorant of the concept.
I fail to see how my statement is different in any way from your much wordier explanation.
Next, I merely used the estimates of Standard and Poors. If you think they are ignorant of materials substitution, please point out exactly where their errors are. Waving your hands and claiming “Ain’t I smart, I took Econ 101” doesn’t cut it.
I’d thoroughly recommend actually thinking about what I wrote before simply repeating what I said in a most arrogant manner.
w.
Sorry you took offence. I guess arrogance is in the eye of the reader. And I did read what you wrote, and thought about it.
You posted an article with a graph showing Copper Required and Known Copper Reserves, the lines crossing at about 2040. You wrote “by 2040 we’ll need about all the copper we’ve currently located in the ground”.
Although you do acknowledge “We’re likely to find more in the ground … it will generally be very poor ore and expensive to mine” your entire thesis is a variation on “we’re running out of stuff”. Then you get upset when I politely point out the flaws (the reserves fallacy and substitution effect). No hand waving was involved either.
I would still reccomend reading the Tim Worstall paper (available free as pdf download). He’s on the same side and there might be something in there you don’t already know – and even if there isn’t, it’s still an amusing read 🙂
All the best,
SBFC
PS: the 240V, 100A feed to my house is in coaxial aluminium, steel wire armored underground cable – installed about 10 years ago. As other commentards have pointed out, overhead HT lines have been aly for ages (steel cored for strength, aly outer layers).
I CLEARLY SAID we’d find more copper. I discussed what “proven reserves” mean. I also pointed out that new discoveries are very likely to be of lower quality and thus more expensive.
So your claim about me not understanding the “reserves fallacy” is just you pathetically trying and failing to score points. Here’s a graphic of mine from a while back.
As that graphic clearly illustrates, I understand the “reserve fallacy” very well. Not only that, but I have understood it for decades. I was the Chief Financial Officer for an oil importing company that did $40 million per year in sales. Your accusation that I don’t understand the concept of “proven reserves” is a sick joke and a measure of both your ignorance and your ugliness. Next time, ask before accusing.
And regarding the “substitution effect”, take it up with the S&P Global folks. I’m simply pointing out the implications of their numbers. As I said above, and as you totally ignored:
w.
PS—I can’t tell you how impressed I am with your lovely anecdote that your house has an aluminum feed-in wire. Gosh, that’s amazing.
Well, what can I say? I’ve followed Anthony’s blog for years (and commented sometimes) and would hate to add any commment that might lower the high level of debate.
That said, I recall some years ago I posted a critical comment on an article of yours (I think where you had conducted some clandestine experiment on unsuspecting commentators). And the reaction that I got was similar to that above.
Which was a pity, because a lot of what you have written (the stories about Samoa especially) have been very good. And I think that we are both on the right side of the narative.
I’m an engineer (electrical & electronics) and have seen and heard so much BS in my career. I generally try to point this out politely, as I did with your article. But, with alies such as your good self, who needs enemies? If I were to suggest to St. Gretta that she was wrong in any way, would there be much difference in the tone of the reply?
SomeBlokeFromCambridge January 25, 2023 12:55 pm
Look, I know you’re hard of reading. You’ve proven that in this very thread.
But what is it about the following that is unclear?
If you’re going to accuse me of something, at least have the albondigas to link to whatever it is you’re babbling about.
And as to you claiming what Greta might do, I have no clue what she might do. But obviously, since you can read people’s minds and foretell their actions, I guess you gotta do you. And since she has obvious mental problems, it looks like you have a leg up on me when it comes to guessing what she might do.
w.
PS—You still haven’t worked up the courage or the time to point out exactly where S&P Global ignored substitution … but you’ve found the courage and the time to make further uncited ugly accusations.
PPS—I’ve never been to Samoa in my life, nor written about it. Once again, you’re listening to the voices in your head. That’s a mistake. They’re not your friends.
Willis – I stand corrected; you did of course write about Fiji, not Samoa, e.g. https://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/12/29/modern-piracy
I’ve been to neither place so maybe an understandable confusion about scribbles from 10+ years ago?
So lets’s quote some of your exact words then:
“Waving your hands and claiming “Ain’t I smart, I took Econ 101” doesn’t cut it.”
“a most arrogant manner”
“just you pathetically trying and failing to score points”
“Your accusation that I don’t understand the concept of “proven reserves” is a sick joke and a measure of both your ignorance and your ugliness.”
“I can’t tell you how impressed I am with your lovely anecdote that your house has an aluminum feed-in wire. Gosh, that’s amazing”
“I know you’re hard of reading. You’ve proven that in this very thread”
“link to whatever it is you’re babbling about”
“ since you can read people’s minds and foretell their actions, I guess you gotta do you. And since she has obvious mental problems, it looks like you have a leg up on me when it comes to guessing what she might do.”
“you’ve found the courage and the time to make further uncited ugly accusations.”
“Once again, you’re listening to the voices in your head.”
In what way are these words of yours not just ad homenem type BS? Methinks thou dust protest too much – and hast become a bit grumpy and rude in old age 😉
Face it mate – you wrote an article on a “running out of stuff” theme with several errors in it (including the one about “copper is the only material suitable for transmitting electricity”).
You posted a graph showing Copper Required and Known Copper Reserves, the lines crossing at about 2040. You wrote “by 2040 we’ll need about all the copper we’ve currently located in the ground”.
And when I politely pointed this out, instead of engaging in a civilized debate (or just ignoring me), you go all shouty and abusive.
Why am I wasting my time replying? Well I have mostly liked your work over the years and feel it’s a pity that you’ve ended up like this. Anyway, we’re probably in https://xkcd.com/386/ territory so I’ll just leave it and let you have any last word.
Kind regards,
SBFC
SBFC, you seem to be laboring under the misimpression that every insult, or in this case every accurate description, is an ad hominem.
Google is your friend.
You also say:
Perhaps that was unclear. I meant we will need all of the proven reserves we’ve currently located in the ground. Note that my statement assumes we’ll locate further proven reserves. I’ve changed the head post to read “by 2040 we’ll need about all the proven reserves of copper we’ve currently located in the ground” to clarify my meaning
Was my statement that “copper is the only material suitable for transmitting electricity” incorrect? Well, in a strict sense, yes. However, there’s a reason that copper has been used in electrical devices and wiring all over the planet for over a century. It’s the most suitable material in most applications. Yes, brass and aluminum and gold and steel all conduct electricity, but we didn’t pick copper by chance.
So yes, it was a simplified overstatement, and on your recommendation, I’ve changed the head post to read “copper is the material most suitable in most conditions for conducting electricity”.
All the best,
w.
PS—When people compare me unfavorably to Greta Thunberg, they’re gonna get their face slapped, metaphorically of course.
Don’t like it?
Don’t care. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
SFBC, here’s an example of why, despite your reasonable and true statement that the Club of Rome is wrong in general, it may be right for the wrong reasons.
The Biden Administration has just banned mining on 225,000 acres in Minnesota. Why is that a problem?
The Biden Crime Family has just put almost 90% of the known US cobalt reserves off-limits, along with a huge amount of copper. Brilliant move.
Turns out that the “Limits To Growth” the Club of Rome spoke about are liberals and so-called “environmentalists” … go figure.
My best to you,
w.
Seriously? There are no resource limits?
A real live Cornucopian!
The Earth is infinite, there is no end to the resources it can provide, and no limit on how much energy or money it takes to extract them.
Here is my image for you, a man sitting in an office 13 floors up yells ‘How’s it going?’
Of course resources will run out of at least economically viable extraction. Anybody who thinks they wont just because they haven’t yet, is simply ignorant.
Yes, of course there are resource limits – but I was talking about Reserves and the fallacy of saying that we are about to run out of them.
Also, those “resource limits” quite often are not what we think. To quote Yogi Berra “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.” Just over a centenary ago people worried about the streets of cities becoming impassable with the ever increasing amount of horse dung. More recently, the doomsayings of “Limits to growth” have not come to pass because of several factors which the authors didn’t predict.
Do look up “The No Breakfast Fallacy: Why the Club of Rome was wrong about us running out of resources” – well worth a read (free as a pdf, you don’t have to pay Amazon or the ASI)
Well, let’s name some resources we *haven’t* run out of, even though there have been in some cases hundreds of years of predictions that we would run out:
Food, coal, oil, natural gas, steel, copper, aluminum, zinc, gold, silver, mercury…etc.
Some resources we have run out of:
Passenger pigeons. So far. “De-extinction” or something close appears possible.
Are there any other resources we’ve run out of?
Is this enough of a copper resource for you?
Our calculations show that the asteroid (6) Hebe alone, the sixth discovered asteroid from the asteroid belt, considered to be the parent body of the H type chondrites, has a copper resource that would probably satisfy our needs for thousands of years. It has a diameter of 190 km and contains 1.39 x 1012 tonnes of copper, which means that only a two-centimetre thick outer layer of this asteroid contains as much copper as the earth’s resources we know today. Of course, how to make the extraction of raw materials from outer space profitable is still problematic. We hope that our research will be one step towards solving this issue.
Peak copper long before peak oil…..
You couldnt make this up!
Funny on the timing. Dan Hurd (Prospecting) said on his youtube channel that he was investing on a copper mine claim in BC, CA because he was sure it was the future. That was 2 days ago.
Utah (yes, that’s in the USA) has the world’s largest copper mine. It is so physically large that it is easily seen from space and “is considered to have produced more copper than any other mine in history”
What exactly makes it the largest copper mine? Thoughtco.com has it at #17.
Kip is referring to the total volume of the mine hole excavation. Thoughtco.com is referring to current copper production capacity.
The Bingham Canyon mine
The Bingham Canyon mine is so large because they’ve been mining there for over 100 years.
I have heard they are now expanding to underground.
Thanks, Kip. There’s a photo of that mine at the top of this post.
w.
So, go long copper? 🙂
I’m long BHP, VALE, and considering also TECK and FCX. FCX has a lousy dividend.
See also https://www.mining.com/the-looming-copper-crunch-and-why-recycling-cant-fix-it/
Developing a new copper deposit takes decades, the current planned openings paint a looming copper crunch
Great article, thank you for that, Hans.
Copper asset retirement costs should be fully bonded for and not communized upon the rest of us, a la coal, oil and gas. Admittedly, it’s still not too late for the latter two. Real costs to plug and abandon hundreds of thousands of high angle, hard to reenter, multilateral wells, requiring not only hydraulic isolation from aquifers but also from adjacent shales, should be assessed. Full bonding for at least P50 costs (instead of the current pennies on the dollar now required) should be enforced. The large E&P’s should not get a free ride based on their bogus “too big to shirk these costs” status.
https://cumulis.epa.gov/supercpad/SiteProfiles/index.cfm?fuseaction=second.cleanup&id=0800403
FYI, the superfund status essentially rescued the Montana School of Mines. They began graduating cleanup specialists, after the supply of Mining Engineering students started to play out. .
And yes, so also should renewable asset retirement costs be fully bonded. They will be ongoing as the resource doesn’t deplete.
As I understand it, that is now the law for wind farms built in Wyoming.
Thanks. I obviously don’t keep up state by state. It should not only be in state rules, but for federal offshore as well. One benefit would be a push for states and the fed to modernize asset retirement costs for oil and gas projects as well.
We have a decommissioned windfarm here right on the Colorado border that hasn’t run since 2017. Excel Energy said in 2017 that they would restore the land to its original status, and they haven’t done a damn thing.
No excuse for this. Excel Energy must be taking put off lessons from Duke Energy.
If it’s any comfort, dozens of oilfields asset retirements have been delayed for decades, because, out of thousands of inactive wells with a few dozen active, they might “need” those inactive wells, somehow, someday. Bel Ridge in California comes to mind, because I worked at Elk Hills, in the relative neighborhood.
It would be entertaining to extrapolate the number of heavy haul trucks (and supporting tires and diesel fuel) necessary to trundle about the raw materials necessary to achieve NetZeroNirvana; but I think I’ll just go long CAT and Komatsu.
I’m not aware of a single new copper mine approval in the US in recent years, so we’re apparently intending to do this on the backs of other races, in other nations. Perhaps if we claim that to be RACIST we can kill the whole agenda.
Get this in your head: Except for the 1%, within a decade or so people will no longer afford a private, personal highway vehicle. The Automobile Age as we know it, will have ended. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has already stated that in the future individuals will “subscribe” to an auto-transport service. (Basically Uber for all, which is not really possible)
That’s because –barring several unforeseen tech breakthroughs– there are not enough raw materials to replace and expand the current fleet of ICE vehicles. Nor is there sufficient generator and transmission capacity to service EV fleets intended to replace ICE technology. That’s the plan. Deal with it.
Current vehicles have a working life of between 10 and 20 years, and the average replacement rate and growth rate will have been factored in by vehicle manufacturers and the various levels of suppliers.. The growth rate in China and India over the last decade or so has been quite high, and demand largely met.
That’s a different can of worms. The proposed time frames are far shorter than the achievable response times, especially with red tape delays in addition to the massively increased resource requirements. As a number of people have already pointed out, it takes at least 10 years to get a new mine producing.
In other words, you disagree with Willis and contend there will never be a shortage of raw materials (rare earths and copper) to replace ICEs in coming decades. If that’s your point, why don’t you directly confront poor Willis with your facts?
What do rare earths have to do with internal combustion or compression ignition engines? Apart from the rapid expansion in China and India, vehicle numbers in most markets tend to grow in line with the population, and the replacement rate of older vehicles is on the order of 8% per year.
If you’re proposing replacing liquid fuelled vehicles with battery electric in a short time frame, I think the appropriate phrase is “tell ‘im ‘e’s dreamin'”. The lead times are just too long.
Given sufficient lead times, the resources or suitable substitutes will become available.
Mining companies have been working to get a copper mine approved in Arizona for the past 20 yrs. The proposed mine is on the south side of the Santa Rita Mountains south of Tucson and SE of Green Valley, AZ. (Remember an unofficial nickname of Arizona is “The Copper State.”) Well, Pima County, the city of Tucson and every imaginable environmental group oppose the mine. In republican administrations mine approvals move forward; in democrat administrations the approvals are revisited and rescinded. Pima County, Tucson and now the governor of Arizona are all democrats who support the Green New Deal and the impossible net zero goals; however, they want to do it without mining. At least without mining in Arizona or the USA.
I’m reminded that I saw a bumper sticker that said something like: Everything we use and eat is mined, grown or fished. The greenies, and end-of-the-world folks seem to forget that.
YOU COULDN’T MAKE THIS UP.
Biden steps forward to ensure that NetZero 2050 remains unattainable.
Biden admin issues 20-year mining ban as it turns to foreign supply chain amid green energy push (msn.com)