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Gathering for the Financial Times’s Mining Summit both in person and online last week, chief executives of global copper mining companies sounded the alarm on the insufficient number of copper mines currently under development to supply the surging material needs of the ever-accelerating green energy transition.

Copper prices may have dropped, however demand for the metal, which is not only a key mainstay metal, but also an indispensable component in green energy technology, is expected to increase drastically to keep pace with the material requirements of the global push towards net zero carbon emissions.

According to the Financial Times, its growing application in this field will result “in it being dubbed the ‘metal of electrification’, with forecasts that it will double to a 50mn tonne market by 2035 compared with 2021 levels, according to S&P Global, which predicts a ‘chronic gap’ between supply and demand.”

While U.S. import reliance for copper hovered around 30 to 35 percent in the 2010s, that number has gone up to more than 40 percent in the 2020s, according to the USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries. 

Miners are pointing out that a confluence of complex permitting timelines, rising inflation and the fact that the commodity is “harder to find in high quantities in the ground” may have led to a situation “where it’s likely there won’t be enough copper to meet decarbonization goals in the next few decades.”

As the Wall Street Journal outlined earlier this month, these circumstances have prompted mining companies to target “a new but also old source – closed mines, also known as brownfield sites.” The Wall Street Journal points to Sweden-based miner Bluelake Mineral, seeking to reopen a mine site in northern Norway that closed 25 years ago, as well as to Rio Tinto’s Resolution Copper project near Superior, Arizona, which is considered one of the most significant undeveloped copper deposits in the world and would reuse the historic Magma Mine which started production in 1910 and operated until 1996. While the project has strong support from the surrounding community, and began the permitting process in 1997, it is still awaiting permits to begin operation.

With Copper becoming increasingly critical in the context of decarbonization efforts – the material has not (yet) been added to the overall U.S. government’s critical minerals list, the Department of Energy recently designated the material a critical material as part of its 2023 Critical Materials Assessment – and with geopolitical volatility reaching heights not seen in decades with this month’s Hamas assault on Israel, securing key mineral supply chains becomes all the more pertinent, and U.S. stakeholders should look to embrace domestic opportunities to unleash our mineral potential where possible.

As Western nations continue their push to reduce their over-reliance on China for their critical mineral needs, some of the key players, including the United States and the European Union, have increasingly turned their eyes on Africa, a continent that is home to an estimated 20% of the metals and minerals required in EV battery technology, and a vast array of other critical minerals as well.

With the continent’s “geopolitical stock” on the rise, observers see African countries becoming more assertive in negotiating mineral deals with external actors, and resorting to resource nationalism “in some economies where we see an insistence on local processing, more stringent local content requirements and generally attempts to integrate these critical mineral supply chains with a broad drive for industrialization.”

Most recently, Kenya is making headlines with legislation pending that would establish a Mining Regulatory Authority to replace the current Mining Rights Board, which would, unlike its predecessor which was an advisory body, “control the exploration, extraction, production, processing, refining, transportation, storage exportation, importation and sale of minerals.”

Kenya is home to significant deposits of copper, graphite, manganese, nickel and iron ore, demand scenarios for which are surging.

With the coronavirus pandemic spotlighting supply chain security issues for critical minerals and against the backdrop of ever-increasing demand, export controls have gained in popularity as a policy tool.

Earlier this summer, reports of India considering an export ban on four key metals – lithium, beryllium, niobium, and tantalum — made headlines on the heels of China announcing export restrictions on gallium and germanium, followed by controls on certain drones and drone-related equipment.

Zimbabwe banned lithium ore exports last December, and Namibia recently banned the export of unprocessed lithium and other critical minerals.

All these announcements tie into a larger trend, which has been noticeable particularly in Latin America, a region with a historic penchant for nationalism, but also elsewhere.

ARPN has featured recent nationalist moves in Chile, Mexico and Bolivia, as well as in Myanmar, Indonesia, and China, and has showcased that even in the Western world, government involvement in the critical minerals sector is on the rise.

Some argue that rather than seeing emerging resource nationalism as a cause for concern, we should embrace it and understand it as an opportunity as “raw material export bans would encourage the construction of processing facilities in producer countries, allow them to claim a larger share of the value chain, (…) encourage the global dispersion of processing capacity that is today dangerously concentrated in China,” and the U.S. could harness this development via an expansion of its friend-shoring network.

Opportunity or threat – resource nationalism is increasingly becoming a policy tool the U.S. and our allies will have to factor into our efforts to decouple from adversary nations, i.e. China. In the process, as ARPN previously outlined, we will have to carefully balance domestic and global policy approaches — as well as public and private sector roles with economic and security concerns to reflect the geopolitical realities of our times.

And, as followers of ARPN well know, this can be best achieved within the context of a comprehensive all-of-the-above approach that focuses on domestic resource development where possible and leverages partnerships where needed.

 

Against the backdrop of ever-increasing critical mineral demand to fuel the clean energy transition and 21st century technologies, mining companies are harnessing the materials science revolution to identify innovative ways to process rocks to extract other metals and minerals from existing mines and waste streams. A case in point: The recent Fortune Minerals/Rio Tinto announcement of a [...]

In a new piece for Metal Tech News, Shane Lasley zeroes in on the U.S. government’s failure – at least to date – to afford critical mineral status to copper, which is not only a key mainstay metal but an indispensable component in clean energy technology, and supply scenarios in the face of surging demand as the [...]

Earlier this month, the Wall Street Journal reported that Saudi Arabia was in early talks with U.S. automaker Tesla to set up a manufacturing facility in the kingdom. While Tesla CEO Elon Musk has since denied these rumors as “utterly false,” whether or not a the two parties are in fact in talks over a rumored Saudi offer to Tesla to [...]

Earlier this moth, the European Parliament’s industry committee voted to endorse the EU’s draft Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA – see our coverage here) which sets benchmarks to increase domestic capacity for critical minerals extraction in an effort to reduce the EU’s over-reliance on supplies from China and other countries. The vote is a timely one and [...]

Members of the U.S. Congress are returning to Washington, D.C. – the Senate is already back while the House will return next week – to tackle a hodgepodge of unresolved federal issues. While, as it does so often, an impasse on federal spending with a looming government shutdown stands to dominate the news cycle, lawmakers [...]

A new report released this month by the Energy Transition Commission, an international think tank comprising a coalition of leaders from across the energy landscape committed to achieving net-zero emissions by mid-century, has identified supply gaps for six materials key to green energy technology and calls for increased investment in the supply chain to stave [...]

As demand for the metals and minerals underpinning the green energy transition continues to surge, the pressure is on for miners to find, explore and develop scores of critical minerals.  Thankfully, the materials science revolution continues to bear fruit, allowing resource companies to employ cutting-edge technology in the quest to meet ever-increasing demand for electric vehicles, [...]

Against the backdrop of mounting supply chain concerns for critical minerals, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has officially added copper to its critical materials list in the context of the agency’s 2023 Critical Materials Assessment. The annual report assesses the criticality of materials to the supply chains in the renewable energy technology sector and focuses [...]