Copper Ore – the key to an electrified world.
Switching from fossil to renewable to cut carbon emissions increases the demand for copper.
Reducing fossil fuels for energy supply – either mobile or stationary – drives a growing demand for one limiting factor: copper. Copper is a necessary raw material for generators, converters, transformers, and motors. Copper wire has to connect places of electrcity supply – like offshore windfarms – with major customer sites inland. A more diversified grid needs increesed interconnectivity to balance electricity supply and demand - every single second.
Studies suggest that demand will grow threefold during the next two decades.
Copper demand pluralism scenario broken down by segment
The mining of copper
Land-based mines
Copper is refined from Copper Ores like Chalkopyrite, Covelite or Bornite, and usually mined at sites in Indonesia, Canady, or Latin America, underground and in open pit mines, with ores containing grades of less than 1% copper. Increasing the current supply would mean to dramatically increase both size and productivity of existing land-based mines, or open up new ones.
Secondary Copper – Recycling
Copper in electric application stays there for decades instaed of years, thus currently build applications will not contribute to a secondary copper market.
Massive Seabed Sulfides
Copper can also be found in huge abundance in Massive Seabed Sulfides. Massive Seabed Sulfides are geologically quite young ore formations compared to terrestrial mines, and contain much higher grades of copper: up to 10% and more, and is less compacted, allowing for much lower engergy consumptions during millig. No overburden has to be removed to reach the ore, and no landfill site has to be set up.
Copper concentration in rocks
Copper is refined from copper ores, which are mainly formed by hydrothermal processes since millions of years on seabeds. Currently mined onsore ores are apprx. 500 mio years old, and transformed and recrystallized by geological processes. Their copper content is ranging around 1% copper. Seabed massive sulfites, more or less freshly formed ores, can contain more than 10 or sometimes more than 20% copper.
