Quoted today in @axios article by @JacKnutson on tension btwn increasing copper demand for renewables and the need to significantly step up copper mining:
"a lot of people... in the clean energy sector are working very hard to reduce copper demand" (1)
axios.com/copper-renewab…
The copper intensities for solar and wind surprised me as well when I first looked into them.
A study of the Springerville, AZ solar farm (6.4 MW) found a copper intensity of around 7000 tons/GW: (2)
copperalliance.org/wp-content/upl…
For wind, official Vestas LCAs for hypothetical 50MW wind farms using V110-2.0MW, V100-2.0MW, and V90-2.0MW turbines yield copper intensities of 1740, 1700, and 3320 tons of copper/GW: (3)
vestas.com/~/media/vestas…
As I allude to in the article, there is positive progress on these fronts though. Lots of work underway to reduce copper intensity in RE tech.
I don't think we're going to run out of copper either - global Cu resource is estimated to be ~4.5x the size of known reserves. (4)
We could also get a lot better at recycling copper at end-of-life, which could substantially reduce future demand.
All of that said, recycling won't keep pace with a large wind/solar buildout, so the need for mining of virgin copper and Cu production increase is very real. (5)
As Jacob outlines, this comes with the potential for environmental costs, so we should do our best to make sure best practices are followed to minimize risks of air, water, and soil pollution from mining/processing activities. (6)
However, I think it is important to keep in mind that realistically, many "extractive" industries aren't going anywhere. The circular economy isn't realizable anytime soon, and we WILL need mines to support the clean energy transition.
We need to come to terms with that! (END)
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