A report by the International Energy Forum talks about copper and its scarcity. The report stated that Copper will be unable to meet the rising demand for electric vehicles and renewable energy resources. This metal is crucial for clean energy generation and so the IEF is concerned and advised to increase the mining process to supply efficiently.
Their research suggests a huge increase in copper till the year 2050.
To meet the expectations of growth in copper mining, 115% more copper must be mined in the upcoming 30 years than has been mined in history. For manufacturing electric vehicles globally, production of more than 55% will be required. However, hybrid electric vehicles will also require more mines.
Mining of copper is not a simple task, beneath the earth’s crust copper is vast enough that it can meet all the requirements globally but acquiring those resources is difficult and time-consuming. It almost takes more than two decades to acquire copper resources and start producing it. Discovering a fact that after 1990 only 16 out of 224 copper was extracted in the last decade.
Source : International Energy Forum
Figure A: The graph shown here shows how much copper is produced. The lines in orange and teal show how much copper is extracted in the past and future. The blue line indicates recycled copper to the mix. The green line estimates that recycling is done at the same rate as in 2018. The darker blue line shows an increase in recycling over time.
“Qdate” is the amount of copper mined. “Qt” is the amount that in reality we can mine.
Figure B: This graph shows how much copper we need. First, the blue line indicates how much copper we’ll need if things remain the same. Further, the yellow line shows copper needed if all cars will get converted to hybrids. The teal one shows the copper required to convert cars into hybrids and update their power grids. Lastly, the green line indicates the total amount of copper required to attain clean energy and renewable energy resources.
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