From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
h/t Philip Bratby
Who’d have thought?
From the Telegraph:
Record-setting copper prices have sparked turmoil for wind and solar farm developers who face rising costs to build green energy projects.
Commodity analysts have warned that the cost of manufacturing renewable technologies – which rely heavily on copper – will surge after the industrial metal hit a record high on the London Metal Exchange.
The price rose as high as $11,200 (£8,500) a ton on Wednesday, extending its gains so far this year to more than 27pc. It is on track for its best year since 2017.
Although prices fell from their peak on Thursday – dipping to $11,183 a ton – they still remain elevated by historical standards.
Bjarne Schieldrop, chief commodities analyst at Swedish bank SEB, said: “It will add costs to all [things] connected to electricity and not the least all things connected to renewable energy, power systems, transformers, EVs (electric vehicles).”
Liam Fitzpatrick, an analyst at Deutsche Bank, warned that the surging price of copper had raised doubts among bosses about the viability of some future green energy projects.
He said many attendees at the bank’s copper conference last month admitted the surging price “does not support the development of major new greenfield projects”.
Wind farms, solar panels and electric vehicles all rely heavily on copper cabling to connect to the national grid. Wind farms, for example, use it for vital cables and transformers to transfer power.
There will be a thriving trade for copper thieves! Better watch out for your EV charging cable at night!
I wonder if Ed will include them in his Green Job numbers?
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Story Tip: Green power bills finally come due for the UK, and Tony Blair reemerges — RT World News
No problem, just subsidize copper. Boom. Done.
It boggles the mind that so much copper has been installed in such low-utilization systems as wind turbines and solar farms and battery storage for grid supply – and in the distribution and transmission hardware to connect them. Just stop proliferating these material-intensive systems which end up sequestering copper to spend most of its time producing nothing of value!!
David, maybe (like Chris suggests in his closing remarks) this throwing copper everywhere is a back-door food stamps program. Thieves cut down what they can carry, stop at their cooperating junk dealer, and sell the copper! Then buy food for their families?
In Denver, they’d steal a truck or a trailer to help them move the copper.
Food? Families? Yeah right.
Around here bitcoin miners steal the electricity directly. Park a semi full of servers next to the main tower and plug in. Sort of like counterfeiting but without the ink. And they don’t do it in lieu of food stamps.
Nope…crack or meth.
https://www.americanexperiment.org/wind-turbines-require-nine-tons-of-copper-which-is-the-weight-of-an-average-school-bus/
The run-up in the copper price means dramatic increase in producers’ profits. However, the same as the run-up in the price of gold, there won’t be much of a rush to capitalize new production.
Just how quickly do you believe a new mine can be opened?
Especially considering the fact that the same environmentalists that are demanding massive wind and solar farms are also completely opposed to mining.
As for gold, nobody invests a lot of money if they don’t believe the increase in price is not permanent or at least long term.
New production in gold and copper has been happening ever since 47 got elected. It’s a new day economically.
Nah, old days getting worse. People feel and know it. Hyped progress, false promises, populist delusion. Dream on..
You can’t fix the economy by going anti woke and anti Green. The jobs are gone and will never come back. All we have is a transportation hub (the Amazons, Wallmart etc/ 75% of employment). In terms of good old production: mmm..not much.
And you know which countries actually do the manufacturing, right?
I hope the west will learn to be humble. It will be a huge climbdown.
Looking forward to all the negative votes by the TDS crowd…which runs BOTH WAYS actually..
Wishful thinking. Anti-woke is great for the economy as is anti-green.
Get government out of the way always boosts the economy and improves the lot of everyone except those who rely on government to hobble the competition.
Jobs are gone, but will come back when the conditions improve, as they are now.
Wow, proud of your economic and political ignorance. Somethings never change with leftists.
As i said, dream on.
And im not a ‘lefty’, nor am i ignorant.
I just don’t belong to a group that raises a flag and starts throwing insults at the opposition.
And i am certain you never read a word of Marx and probably only rudimentary classic economics.
But hey, whatever makes you feel good about yourself, right?
Then you dont need to use things like…eh..arguments.
Go on, then, make an effort.
Maybe you should have also read the second half of The Manifesto where Marx predicts the failure of his system due to the frailties of human psychology.
Ive read it all. But Kapital was his magnum opus. The Manifesto was just what it was and instigated by Engels. The main issue with Marx is not his economic ideas but his ‘solutions’ on the scale needed for a society. A Co-op is a form of small organisation that works. Workers owning the tools of production. But Marx was overly influenced by Darwin and thought he had discovered the laws of economics and trajectory. Which meant he did not read Darwin very well as Darwin’s work was all about survival by small adaptations to the environment. Those co-ops did quite well and the organisation is still alive. The trouble was and is large scale conglomerates..
Excellent question!!!
It’s depressing how few people understand the amount of time needed to open mines, build factories, get equipment for electric power systems, etc.
It’s also depressing how many people think mines have exactly one production rate.
Try digging for Rare Earth.
Don’t do it in yr backyard..
Don’t need to open new mines. Just increase the production rate. Mine production is not an on/off proposition.
And there’s not much doubt this price increase will continue for as long as the prevailing ridiculous madness continues.
Why ridiculous madness?
Because it’s as plain as bloody daylight that governments stupidly determined to pursue Net Zero have not remotely determined viability of the concept, having not even conducted scoping-level feasibility studies.
But Dr Simon Michaux of the Finland Geological Survey has conducted an incredibly detailed peer reviewed study to determine the quantity of metals and minerals demanded by 2050 if Net Zero is to be achieved (Geological Survey of Finland, Bulletin 416 – Special Issue. Estimation of the quantity of metals to phase out fossil fuels in a full system replacement, compared to mineral resources), this for the construction of wind and solar generation equipment, extension of grids by 3-fold, batteries for EVs and for storage to cover for periods when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow.
Just so you know, Dr Simon Michaux is a Geologist, a Mining Engineer, a Metallurgical Engineer, all in one – which is almost unheard of – and he’s a Physicist to boot. And he’s not just an academic – he’s got serious hands-on operational experience in the Australian mining industry.
Looking at copper, and taking the liberty of rounding Michaux’s numbers, which hardly alters the impact of what these demonstrate:
Between now and 2050, the amount of copper required to achieve global Net Zero, including provision for 28 days of battery storage to cover for periods of no wind and no sun, is 6 BILLION tonnes. However, there are one or two problems . . .
Current global copper production is in the order of 25 million tonnes per annum (Mtpa), and global copper Reserves are 880 million tonnes (Mt).
So, at current rates of production it would take 240 years to produce 6 BILLION tonnes.
And if it was possible to overnight/by tomorrow morning increase production to 240Mtpa – required to produce 6 BILLION tonnes by 2050 – with global Reserves currently standing at 880Mt, these would be depleted in . . . less than four years.
An idiotic politician like Dead’Ed Miliband would quick as a flash stupidly say, “just build more mines,” wouldn’t he!!
Trouble is, from the point of discovery of a mineral Resource (which takes years of painstaking geological exploration work in itself) to the establishment of a producing operating mine is a 15 year exercise AT BEST.
So it looks like my employment of the words ridiculous and stupid and madness is . . . entirely justified.
In the introduction to that research paper I see something I don’t like.
He wouldn’t have got the paper published without saying that.
No problem, we’ll be mining asteroids by next month.
They’re full of gold too, so they say. Just gotta get there, invent a whole new tech-no problem.
Is that the same Simon Michaux who has worked with Nate Hagen?
They both agree that the Green Transition cannot happen, especially in the stated timeframe. And they seriously doubt the whole electrification path.
However, they both believe the world eventually has to come off hydrocarbons in a balanced way because they assume that, due to the acceleration of their use worldwide the chance of running out will increase over time and we will in fact really need them for essentials in any scenario. There is a valid argument to be made i think. There is high uncertainty about the amount of hydrocarbons left, especially the ones easily accessed.
They fully back nuclear power.
The one big uncertainty is geo politics and war. That is to say: can the US accept a multi polar ( ie, more than 2) world?
Or is it perpetual war w ‘enemies’, zero sum game, slash and burn ie, standard US policy since WW2, turbo charged by the end of the cold war?
Answers on a napkin, please!
We have hundreds of years of most oil and gas and well over 1000 years of coal.
Yes were will run out some day, however impoverishing ourselves now to delay something that won’t happen for centuries is the kind of solution that only a socialist could come up with.
The intelligent solution is to use those fossil fuels to make us rich now, then use that wealth to develop new sources of power.
For example, traditional nuclear is getting better and cheaper and new forms of fission power are being developed.
Who knows, in a couple hundred years, we might get fusion working.
“We have hundreds of years of most oil and gas and well over 1000 years of coal”.
That might be true but i just wouldn’t trust anyone who pretends to be certain of that. It would be great. However, my skepticism has gone out to all directions.
My approach would be to try and develop improvements to existing technology like a better combustion engine and invest in science programs that are NOT based on flawed Green Transition ideas. So much money has been wasted.
Anyway, another way of looking at it is that IF crude oil becomes more scarse it will get more expensive and tech/ economies will have to adjust, get more efficient and source more things locally.
Let’s apply a GDP deflator to see how real prices compare over longer periods, i.e. dispelling the Paul Ehrlich commodity price predictions. Historically, copper prices can be driven short term by Chilean or Peruvian mine strikes or Asian inventory accumulation. Demand response could be helped by 48 volt architecture in cars after Tesla shared its tech with the other car companies. Another supply constraint is mining lawfare in the US and Canada holding back mine projects that could easily supply half of US demand from mostly complete mines, for the next 60 years. Now what about housing and nonresidential construction for wiring and plumbing demand?
You clearly need to have a look at Dr Simon Michaux’s paper (link above), which pretty much demonstrates that, no matter what the mining industry is actually capable of achieving . . . it ain’t going to happen.
Let’s apply a GDP deflator
The taxation defibrilator – very nasty shocks. h/t R Reeves.
The science needed to increase voltages in cars is well known. What is lacking has been the economic necessity.
Sometime back in the 50’s or 60’s, cars went from 6 volts to 12 as the number of power consuming devices in cars increased.
“the dramatic rise of China as the central player across numerous stages of the value chain” – Baltic Exchange
And Copper is found in some rather unpleasant places on the planet like the DRC, Botswana and South America. But then as we know, even the Archbish of Gaia in the UK – Red Rev Ed Miliband – has admitted that Boreas, Notos, Eurus and Zephyr are not going to deliver what was promised…
the predicted efficiency of wind turbines is being reduced by more than a quarter.
Maybe one of the four winds is on sabbatical?
At least we know why our government was prepared to torpedo a trial involving Chinese spies in Parliament.
‘the predicted efficiency of wind turbines is being reduced by more than a quarter. ‘
Imagine setting up a business where after it’s built you admit your estimated return was 25% too high. Where does that put profit margin?–certainly way below where most large copper mines operate. I’ve done some mining feasibility studies in my career–I should/would be in jail if I was 25% out.
No existing wind turbine will be replaced. They are stranded assets. Wind can go missing for weeks and that means huge storage to get dispatchable power from them.
Solar has a chance of being economic in selective applications if battery prices continue to fall. But solar/battery is not competitive with efficient coal or gas as grid generators,
All this nonsense because Manabe made a primitive atmospheric model that concocted a story about CO2 altering the energy balance – so naive yet so many useful idiots have fallen for the scam. Manabe should rot in prison for accepting the Nobel prize.
Would YOU refuse a Nobel Prize? 😃
After Obama, Hell yes! It’s worthless now except for maybe the hard sciences-note, I said hard science, not greenie crap.
Story Tip. – Sexy Climate Cash
British taxpayers are footing the bill for a £69million project to distribute condoms in the Congo basin as part of a climate aid scheme.
Government documents justify the use of the green cash for the project as a part of easing “demographic pressures on forests” in the area. They suggest that slowing rapid population growth would result in reduced deforestation rates, The Telegraph reported. – GBNews
£69million: All that cash must have included high priced actors to demonstrate proper use and disposal. Communities in the USA could ban these as they have done for single use plastic bags at grocery check-out counters.
Did you guys import all the losers from USAID that Trump fired? Lucky you…not.
As a longtime reloader, I accumulated a modest box of exhausted rifle brass. Since I’ve been browbeaten into knee-jerk recycling, I went to a metals facility hoping to just have it out of my garage. They handed me a check for $127.
The copper thieves are salivating.