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Power Earth

A Coming Copper Shortage Could Derail the Energy Transition, Report Finds 290

Posted by BeauHD from the supply-and-demand dept.
An all-electric future depends heavily on copper, and looming supply shortfalls could hamper nations' goals of reaching net-zero emissions by 2050, according to a new report from S&P Global. Unless significant new supply becomes available, climate goals will be "short-circuited and remain out of reach," the report says. CNBC reports: Electric vehicles, solar and wind power, and batteries for energy storage all run on copper. An EV requires 2.5 times as much copper as an internal combustion engine vehicle, according to S&P Global. Meanwhile, solar and offshore wind need two times and five times, respectively, more copper per megawatt of installed capacity than power generated using natural gas or coal. Copper is also key to the infrastructure that transports renewable energy, thanks in part to its electrical conductivity and low reactivity. Its uses include cables, transistors and inverters.

The report forecasts copper demand nearly doubling to 50 million metric tons by 2035. By 2050, demand will reach more than 53 million metric tons. To put this figure in perspective, S&P Global noted that that's "more than all the copper consumed in the world between 1900 and 2021." Renewable energy deployment will account for much of the demand spike. S&P Global forecasts copper needed for EVs, wind, solar and batteries tripling by the middle of the next decade. This will happen alongside demand growth from other areas, pushing copper's demand to never-before-seen levels.

S&P Global offers two future scenarios in an effort to forecast how short the market will be. Under the "Rocky Road Scenario" -- in which production continues largely as is -- annual supply shortfall will reach almost 10 million metric tons in 2035. In the more optimistic "High Ambition Scenario" -- in which mines increase utilization and ramp up recycling -- the market will still be in a deficit for most of the 2030s. "Under either scenario, there would not be enough supply to meet the demand of Net-Zero-Emissions by 2050," the report concludes. The report notes that it takes, on average, 16 years for a new copper mine to get off the ground. "For the time being, increasing utilization at existing mines and ramping up recycling can fulfill some of the higher demand," it says.
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A Coming Copper Shortage Could Derail the Energy Transition, Report Finds More

A Coming Copper Shortage Could Derail the Energy Transition, Report Finds

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  • Take out all the copper telephone or tv cables and replace them with fibre, reuse the removed copper to make power cables instead.

    • Re:Telephone cables (Score:5, Informative)

      by Sique ( 173459 ) on Friday July 15, 2022 @03:12AM (#62704362) Homepage
      That's the "let them eat cake" solution.

      A normal 110 kV wire has a cross section of 630 square millimeter. A phone wire has a cross section of .6 square millimeter. You would need 1000 miles of phone wire to make a single mile of 110 kV wire. Additionally, all the equipment you need to route the signal on fibre, also needs copper.

      • Re:Telephone cables (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Archtech ( 159117 ) on Friday July 15, 2022 @04:51AM (#62704524)

        I would like to compliment Sique for demonstrating exactly what an instructive, factual response should look like. Slashdot needs many more posts like that.

      • Re:Telephone cables (Score:5, Interesting)

        by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Friday July 15, 2022 @06:08AM (#62704640) Homepage Journal

        A normal 110 kV wire has a cross section of 630 square millimeter. A phone wire has a cross section of .6 square millimeter. You would need 1000 miles of phone wire to make a single mile of 110 kV wire.

        Copper phone lines don't come in single strands. A single copper phone cable can have hundreds of pairs; even a century ago (literally!) they were making phone lines with 1,800 pairs. Your conclusion might well be correct, but your math is off by 2-4 orders of magnitude depending on the specific case.

        • Re:Telephone cables (Score:5, Informative)

          by Sique ( 173459 ) on Friday July 15, 2022 @06:19AM (#62704662) Homepage
          Ì know. That's why I talked of wires, and not cables. Note that 110 kV lines also don't have a single wire, but at least three of them.

          Disclaimer: I worked as a field service engineer for phone systems for 15 years. Just the grounding wire of a phone switch has more copper than the normal 25 pair phone cable per length. Add to that the power cables, and in the end, most of the copper in a phone system is for powering the device, not for transmitting the signal, which makes sense, because the energy flowing through the signal cables has to come from the power supply. In the end, the amount of copper used for sending phone signals to any point in the world is dwarfed by the copper already there just to power anything at this point.

          • To my mind the problem even bigger than cross-sectional area is the fact that each strand is insulated, and most phone copper has been spliced to hell and back. You can't reasonably and safely use that to carry mains power, and just terminating it would be an enormous PITA. Even if you had enough copper to carry a useful amount of power, it still wouldn't make sense to try to use it. In order to safely use multiple insulated conductors to carry power you have to protect each one from overload separately...

            • I doubt the original commenter meant a direct ‘pull this out and plug it in over there’ but rather, melt down the copper and make it into electrical wires. The sentiment is admirable, but another un-considered difficulty is the fact that, the smaller the metal material, the more difficult it is to recycle efficiently. Things like small gauge wires, soda cans, have a large external surface area for their to volume, which means more corroded surface area, which carries contaminants into the mix wh
        • Thats a lot of jacketing on that 100pair cable. The fuses are a bigger source. When copper theft was a problem around 2008-2012 they started replacing fuses with copper clad aluminum(?) instead of pure copper. It worked as well and required less copper. About a decade ago they announced ground sapphire made a better conductor for long distances than copper. Theres a lot of places we can reclaim copper. This article is BS. If copper were at risk of being rare its value would exceed silver from mere speculati

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by airport76 ( 7682176 )
        110 KV cables can be (and usually are) made of aluminium. No need to use copper for that.

      • That's the "let them eat cake" solution.

        A normal 110 kV wire has a cross section of 630 square millimeter. A phone wire has a cross section of .6 square millimeter. You would need 1000 miles of phone wire to make a single mile of 110 kV wire. Additionally, all the equipment you need to route the signal on fibre, also needs copper.

        When copper becomes as expensive as silver is today due to incredible demand and looming shortages, you'd be surprised at the efforts humans go to in order to pull money out of telephone lines. All metal recycling is about value extracted, which is hopefully higher than the cost of effort. People do a lot on this planet for mere pennies.

        Speaking of copper shortages, anyone seen a massive waste of metals being shit out of a mint at a loss anywhere? Sure as hell hope we learn to vote better before the real

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by GlennC ( 96879 )

          Sure as hell hope we learn to vote better...

          Thanks to the combined efforts of "Team Red" and "Team Blue", "better" is no longer an option in the United States.

      • In the Netherlands, there's 21 million km of phone wire in the ground, enough to make 21000 km of 110 kV cable.

      • As airport76 has said and for some reason is voted down to one point while this post is strangely voted to five points.
        110 KV and other high voltage transmission cables are nearly always made of aluminum. There are no copper savings to be had on HV transmission cables.

    • Take out all the copper telephone or tv cables ...

      Don't forget all the copper in those socks [copperfitusa.com] and such ... :-)

      Maybe squeeze the excess copper out of those folks with Wilson's Disease [wikipedia.org] too !

      • Also, don't forget all those copper roofs that are now green. Take them off and replace them with thatch!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dbialac ( 320955 )
      No. We need to use well developed technologies to replace gasoline as the fuel in an ICE. Hydrogen and ethanol based on sugarcane or sugar beets already work well and there's no need for transition. Boeing found a crop in the desert that works well (google it). Somebody will inevitably try to argue that crops take up farm land, but the reality is that we already use huge tracts of land for corn based ethanol and sugar beets can produce 4x the ethanol per acre that corn does.
      • I cannot agree with you about biofuels. Hydrogen, however, will get a fair shake. There have been huge gains recently in producing green hydrogen (i.e. not from natural gas) efficiently and larger and larger green hydrogen plants are being developed as we speak. Fuel cells are also still advancing, although it sounds like you're more in favor of simple combustion.

        I don't think green-hydrogen powered fuel cells will be taking over automobiles anytime soon since electricity works so well (sorry Toyota) b

  • Other metals exist (Score:5, Informative)

    by Hentes ( 2461350 ) on Friday July 15, 2022 @03:13AM (#62704366)

    There is nothing magical about copper that makes it the only metal capable of conducting electricity. Yes, it's a good conductor, but you can make a steel or aluminium wire with the same resistance as a copper wire, you just need to make it thicker. That isn't done today because it's cheaper to use a thin copper wire, but it puts a cap on how much copper's price can increase.

    • I wonder if more exotic stuff like LN2-cooled superconductors or graphene wire ever become cost-effective on a larger scale. Graphene can beat copper on conductivity: https://www.bosch.com/stories/... [bosch.com]
      I believe electric airplane motor maker MagniX looked into superconducting motor coils, but I don't know if that's still an active area of research by them.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Sique ( 173459 )
      Still, it's the magic material that does it much better compared to the cheaper alternatives. Only silver and gold are better at conducting electricity. There are aluminum wires, but aluminum is prone to hair cracks under mechanical stress, creating a piece of wire with much less cross section, thus higher electrical resistance. Aluminum wire heats up easily and can create a fire hazard.

      Maybe carbon nanotubes or similar materials will replace copper in the future, or there is another breakthrough for room

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by k2r ( 255754 )

        > There are aluminum wires, but aluminum is prone to hair cracks under mechanical stress, creating a piece of wire with much less cross section,

        We made a lot of progress in metallurgy within the last 50 years, but I don't think that we put a lot of energy :-) into improving aluminium alloys for electricity transport. So there may be a lot of room for improvement, at least compared to carbon nano tube stuff, which still is rare and bordering science fiction.

        • In fact we have been putting a lot of time, money, and energy into improving aluminum wiring, in part because various automakers are contemplating a future in which they're going to have to use it for cost reasons. The prices aren't high enough to force a switch yet, but as the wiring is one of the most important parts of the vehicle, they want to get it right the first time. Many automakers have had problems when updating their wiring, notably Mercedes having problems again and again with wiring insulated

        • >improving aluminium alloys for electricity transport

          There are no magical electrical alloys. Anything but 99.999% pure (or as close as you can get) is useless for electrical conductivity, same for Al and Ag and Cu.

          • There are no magical electrical alloys. Anything but 99.999% pure (or as close as you can get) is useless for electrical conductivity, same for Al and Ag and Cu.

            There are important characteristics other than electrical conductivity, such as ductility and tensile strength [global-sei.com]. Heat treatment is also nearly as important as the alloy.

        • The power lines on the poles all over the country are aluminum. Copper is used mainly from the pole on into the house.

      • Re:Other metals exist (Score:5, Informative)

        by necro81 ( 917438 ) on Friday July 15, 2022 @07:52AM (#62704800) Journal

        There are aluminum wires, but aluminum is prone to hair cracks under mechanical stress, creating a piece of wire with much less cross section, thus higher electrical resistance.

        A large amount of high voltage transmission wires are aluminum [google.com]. Aluminum's conductivity is about 2/3 that of copper, but its density is about 1/3 that of copper, and it's a hell of a lot stronger. So, for a given current-carrying capacity, an equivalent aluminum cable will 1) be a lot lighter and 2) be able to hold up its own weight, whereas 3) the copper cable needs a lot of steel reinforcement to avoid sagging or breaking. (In practice, aluminum cables still use some steel, because the steel makes the cable stiffer.)

        • Re:Other metals exist (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Mspangler ( 770054 ) on Friday July 15, 2022 @10:07AM (#62705128)

          Tensile strength of pure aluminum is 90 MPa.

          Tensile strength of pure copper is 210 MPa.

          Alloys of both are usually stronger, but also have higher resistance,

          Aluminum power cables used in overhead wiring have a center steel wire that carries the weight of the cable. Where the aluminum wires connect to the service box they have to be coated with anti oxidant goo to present the oxide film from building up and causing overheating problems that lead to fire.

          The first attempt at using aluminum wiring in housing did not end well.

    • Sure, I'd use silver or gold. These peasants are constantly stirring trouble for no reason at all...

    • The UK used aluminium house wiring (pronounced alumin-I-um, of course) in the 1960s, either raw aluminium or copper-plated. The cables were multi-strand rather than the single-strand copper it replaced. My house still has some, and it's a pain because it's not as flexible and it becomes brittle - I try not to do anything to the old cables unless essential. But it still conducts electricity as well as ever...

      • he UK used aluminium house wiring (pronounced alumin-I-um, of course) in the 1960s, either raw aluminium or copper-plated.

        Hee, hee... From The Good Place [wikipedia.org], Chapter 25 (S2E12), "The Burrito": Say Aluminum [youtube.com].

      • I believe another problem with aluminum is the special care that must be taken when you connect to it. Most the sockets/switches I buy for the house are quite specific, Cu connections only. Here is a blog about the dangers of Al wiring. Spoiler alert, house fire. https://earlybirdelectricians.... [earlybirde...icians.com] For power companies, I think they have been using Al wire on poles for decades. I worked for a power company one summer and I think all the spools on the trucks were Al.

        • It's not a big deal because you can get crimp-on extension pigtails, so you can terminate your aluminum in copper. It's also not a big deal because it's not difficult to source breakers or receptacles which are designed to accept aluminum. It's better to reterminate the wiring though, so it's a non-consideration forever after.

    • Re:Other metals exist (Score:4, Informative)

      by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Friday July 15, 2022 @04:13AM (#62704462)

      Yes, it's a good conductor, but you can make a steel or aluminium wire with the same resistance as a copper wire, you just need to make it thicker. That isn't done today because it's cheaper to use a thin copper wire

      Well, that and the fact that houses started catching fire the last time people tried to transition from copper to aluminum.

    • I thought that the high voltage lines were made of Aluminium, because it takes fewer towers to hang them on. Copper is a good conductor, but it is also heavy and not exceptionally strong. Aluminium is also a good conductor, but with a lot less weight.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by necro81 ( 917438 )

      There is nothing magical about copper that makes it the only metal capable of conducting electricity. Yes, it's a good conductor, but you can make a steel or aluminium wire with the same resistance as a copper wire

      Indeed. There was a time - and perhaps a future - where sodium wire [slashdot.org] was a thing.

  • I see mainstream is starting to catch up (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Luckyo ( 1726890 ) on Friday July 15, 2022 @03:21AM (#62704374)

    So this was known in the power generation circles at least for five-seven years when first zero carbon plans started to solidify into directives of "dear enginerds, we humanist educated politicians made a decision to do green transition. You need to figure out how much grants you need to get us to what we promised". That's when math was done and we realized that things like copper availability, nickel availability etc is so woefully insufficient for the proposed "green economy" that there's little chance of us ever getting there this century, if even then.

    In fact most of the "green new deal" castle in the clouds nonsense was pushed specifically by people who don't do engineering. Their assumption was "but those politically inept engineers that generally avoid business of politics for some reason will figure it out with future technologies". Almost all promises of zero carbon are also based on the same assumption of future technologies doing it.

    Meanwhile people like me have been talking about this problem openly for years now, but there's enough people who have been fooled into believing that the only reason we're not transitioning to "green economy" is because of "Big Oil and evil right wingers" to shout people like me down every time. I guess it's good that mainstream is finally starting to notice now that power sector has been penalized and "transitioned to wind and solar" so much, that we're looking at potential blackouts this winter in first world nations. Maybe eventually this humanist nonsense will stop and we'll actually focus on working out the problems with green tech BEFORE deploying it at scale rather than demolishing old, working technology without having a replacement for it as was done in places like Germany.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sd4f ( 1891894 )

      Their assumption was "but those politically inept engineers that generally avoid business of politics for some reason will figure it out with future technologies". Almost all promises of zero carbon are also based on the same assumption of future technologies doing it.

      What you describe there, in political terms, they like to refer to themselves as visionaries or at least being a politician with a vision, that is, they said it loudly first, therefore they can take all the credit when the enginerds actually figure out how to do it. If it's physically impossible to implement, well then that visionary just gets relegated to the political dustbin of history, as one of the chaff that didn't make it.

      Never forget the number one rule of management; if it happened under your nomin

      • Well, as an enginerd myself I've done my share of eye-rolls upon hearing ridiculous promises and "visions". Having said that, I've also done plenty of eye-rolls when the reason for not doing an environmentally "good" thing were purely financial. There are some basic economic principles and human behavior that govern finance, but policy-makers *do* have the power to change things through laws, subsidies, etc. You want "green" XY? Sure, me and my ilk will make it happen, but you first have to put your money

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by sd4f ( 1891894 )
          Well that's the fundamental democratic question; any politician that actually does what needs to be done, won't get reelected. They all know that to some degree, which is precisely why dealing with complex problems in politics, usually involves as much kicking the can down the road, as possible.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by k2r ( 255754 )

      > Maybe eventually this humanist nonsense will stop and we'll actually focus on working out the problems with green tech BEFORE deploying it at scale rather than demolishing old, working technology without having a replacement for it as was done in places like Germany.

      Ah yeah, can you please elaborate on what currently is Germany's problem with "going green" from an engineering perspective - besides from Putin going nuts?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by deKernel ( 65640 )

        Well, all good engineers will always have contingency plans. What was Germany's contingency plans? We shut down nuclear plans and rely upon wind energy for which can't yet fill our needs with due to lack of turbines....that also make HEAVY USE of copper.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by sfcat ( 872532 )

        Ah yeah, can you please elaborate on what currently is Germany's problem with "going green" from an engineering perspective - besides from Putin going nuts?

        So solar and wind are unreliable. So you need either huge amounts of storage that we don't have the materials to build here on Earth, or you need some quick reacting power source to come online when the wind and solar fail. That quick reacting power source is natural gas. So when Putin goes nuts, invades Ukraine and cuts off the natural gas, Germany doesn't just lose the natural gas, it loses the renewables used for baseload too. In Germany's case because they took offline so much of their generating ca

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Klaxton ( 609696 )

          "additional storage is not needed for up to 40 to 50 per cent wind and solar penetration. That’s because the grid can rely on existing back-up ( built to meet peaks in demand and for when coal and gas “baseload” generators trip or need to be repaired).

          Beyond those levels, storage needs to be part of the equation. But again, not as much as many would think. But as the back-up generators gradually exit the grid, they can be replaced by various storage types, until storage then becomes the pr

        • You need storage anyway because you need to synthesize massive amounts of hydrogen for the chemical industry no matter how you source your primary energy. So what is this storage issue? It's fictional.

          In Germany's case because they took offline so much of their generating capacity including their nuclear (the real solution to global warming), that they can't meet demand now.

          Germany can meet demand *very easily* -- by running coal plants. The problem is, it's dirty. They should probably legally mandate a percentage of coal power revenue beyond the EEG fees to be reinvested by utilities in the energy transition, but Germany has the same problem with energy lobby as the US.

  • What it fails to recognise is the potential for existing mines that have been incompetently run (Zambia and Congo mainly) to massively increase production when the price ramps up. Price increases are very effective in bringing production back up, and also in encouraging recycling.

    So pay attention to this elderly gentleman

    https://youtu.be/nR0lOtdvqyg [youtu.be]

  • Copper down 30% this year (Score:5, Insightful)

    by LuckyPee ( 8777991 ) on Friday July 15, 2022 @04:39AM (#62704512)
    And yet the price of copper has fallen 30% this year (the real reason they are trying to pump up the price with this fearmongering report). Even with 10% inflation in everything else...

    Can't think of a reason why all those mining companies would want to talk up the price of copper. Can you?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sjames ( 1099 )

      ^THIS^

      They want to jump on the "inflation" bandwagon so they need to grease the tracks with gloom and doom reports giving an excuse for it first. Then they can fulfill their own prophesy and look like visionaries rather than just gouging assholes.

    • I wonder if it has anything to do with that fact that copper-clad aluminium wire [wikipedia.org] may soon displace solid copper wire in typically copper heavy applications like building wiring since they are less expensive and lighter (lower shipping costs).

  • Fibre (Score:2)

    by SJ ( 13711 )

    Now seems like a good time to rip up all the old phone lines and replace them with fibre. How much copper is in the ground wrapped in plastic, doing absolutely nothing any more.

  • Unless significant new supply becomes available, climate goals will be "short-circuited and remain out of reach," the report says.

    Sure, in the case of a business-as-usual, except turned Green, scenario.

    But how about we use less electricity? Build less useless gadgets, albeit "green" gadgets? Don't focus so hard on personal EVs and shift priority to public transportation (with proper vents so as to accommodate current and future pandemics)?

    You know, actual, possible solutions.

    • Re:Alternative solution (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Nrrqshrr ( 1879148 ) on Friday July 15, 2022 @06:43AM (#62704694)

      Our economy isn't built for that. If you start looking at what's necessary, what's luxury, and what's wasteful, you will quickly realize that most jobs out there just exist for the sake of giving people something to spend their money on.
      Our whole society needs to change if we want to be mindful of our consumption.

    • You can't solve the public transportation disease transmission problem with vents. It would be better to solve it with a different kind of public transportation, one that looked like something in between cars and trains. You can eliminate pneumatic tires and make self-driving trivial in one fell swoop.

  • Always have been, since the 50ies.

    • Only that they're dog-years now.

    • The pint you're missing is that the amount of copper per unit of GDP will be much higher in the renewable all electric economy. It's a fair question as to whether there is enough copper to go around, and its production rate. Even if there is enough copper overall, the rate of production might limit how fast you can convert to a "green" economy.

      Even more so when you consider how desperately environmentalists fight against any new mine.

  • In OECD countries the majority of people live & work in cities. How about instead of trying to replace everyone's individual cars that are inefficient, cause accidents, pollution, traffic jams, & generally slow everything down & make life unpleasant, why not reform & enhance public transport & private car ownership alternatives to make more efficient use of what we have? Most privately owned cars sit idle most of the day & night & we have huge areas & buildings dedicated to s

    • As someone who actually lived in a city with an awesome public transport grid, allow me to tell you why: Because at times, you want to leave the city (which means that suddenly that great public transport grid ceases to exist at the city limits) or want to transport something other than your groceries (and even that can be a tad bit unwieldy if you only have Saturday to buy groceries for a family of 4 because every other day you only come home after the stores already closed, yes, that's a real problem over

  • Copper price is at pre covid levels right now so I don't think there is a shortage.

  • https://www.reuters.com/world/... [reuters.com]

    The Rio Tinto Plc mine is more than 40 billion pounds of copper.

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