Guest posts by Willis Eschenbach
There’s been a lot of talk lately about how the scarcity of “rare earth” minerals like lithium and cobalt will hinder the “green revolution”. In that regard, I looked at an interesting 2022 study by Standard & Poors Global (SP Global) on the daily amount of plain old copper required for the Net-Zero 2050 scenario.The future of copper: Will existing supply shortages impede the energy transition?“, and the answer is… yes. It will be.
In my post”Bright blue impossibleI have listed a number of physical, political and economic reasons why we cannot achieve “Net-Zero” CO.2 emissions by 2050. This post is about a reason that I didn’t mention in that post.
The point is that copper is the only material suitable for power transmission… and in addition, it is also used in building construction, home appliances, electrical appliances, brass hardware and mobile phones, as well as expanding applications in communication, data processing and storage
So if we’re going to go to an all-electric world, we’re going to need a really huge amount of copper.
How much? Well, according to the “Future of Copper” linked above, here’s the bad news:
Figure 1. Estimated amount of copper needed to achieve Net-Zero 2050.
Not sad.
And as they say on TV, “But wait, there’s more!” The USGS estimates that there are 880 million tons of copper recoverable in the ground. And this is how it compares to the cumulative demand for copper shown in Figure 1.
Figure 2. Cumulative copper required for Net-Zero 2050 shown in Figure 1 and known recoverable copper reserves using current technology.
So… by 2040, we’ll need about all the copper that’s currently in the ground, and we’re still nowhere near Net-Zero 2050. We’ll probably find more in the ground, which will give additional reserve recovery. But generally it will be very poor ore and expensive to mine. “In the old days”, as it is said, ores containing 4% or even 6% copper were not uncommon. But the newly discovered ore has a copper content of 0.1%. Of course, as it becomes more scarce, it becomes more expensive, allowing poorer ores to become economically viable… but that leads to another problem.
The current London metal exchange price for copper is around ten thousand dollars per ton. So the coin needed for Net-Zero would cost a minimum of fourteen trillion dollars at current prices. However, as noted just above, as copper becomes more scarce, prices are bound to rise. So the total cost will probably be at least fifty percent higher or even more, let’s say at least twenty trillion dollars…
And that’s only for molten copper. It does not include converting copper into insulated wires, transporting wires and other copper products to where they will be used, installing new transmission lines, substations, switching equipment , generators and all the other costs of bringing the global grid to the level needed for an all-electric world. Leading consulting firm McKinsey says:
Our analysis of the industry-standard scenario for net zero by 2050 suggests that approximately $275 trillion in cumulative spending on physical assets would be needed, or about $9.2 trillion per year. years, from 2021 to 2050.
That means we will have to spend $25 billion every day, including weekends, until 2050. Starting tomorrow. Riiight… full article by McKinsey here.
And expanding any form of mining faces a host of political, environmental and regulatory issues. It could easily take ten years and billions of dollars before the first shovel goes underground. Protests from the “green people” stopped nearly all new mining in the US… at the same time, those geniuses called for an end to fossil fuels.
One last factor of difficulty. Much of the copper ore, and most of the refining and smelting facilities, are in… yes… China. From linked research:
The challenge will be compounded by an increasingly complex geopolitical, trade, and risk-based environment at the country level. There are several dynamics that will have a specific effect on copper access. China holds a preeminent position in copper smelting (47%), refining (42%) and use (54%), in addition to a large position in production, making it the epicenter of world copper. Continued trade tensions and other forms of competition between the US and China could affect the copper market going forward. Supply chain resilience has emerged as a strategic imperative, especially in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine. Research shows that by 2035, the United States will import between 57% and 67%—that is, up to two-thirds—of its copper needs. An increasingly stiff competition for key metals could very well have geopolitical implications.
And if you think the Chinese won’t take advantage of those “geopolitical effects,” you don’t understand our Eastern friends.
So we can Please stop this Net-Zero nonsense? It’s an impossible goal that won’t solve an imaginary problem, and it will bankrupt us all, trigger widespread energy poverty and push the poor in the process.
Best for everyone on a lovely winter day,
w.
Like it’s mine are not: I can defend my word. I cannot defend other people’s interpretations of my words. So when you comment, please quote the exact words you are discussing.
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