Copper Cannot Be Mined Fast Enough to "Electrify Everything," Not Even Cars.

[NNadir]

This note came into one of my news feeds: Report shows copper can't be mined fast enough to electrify the US

Some text:

Copper cannot be mined quickly enough to keep up with current U.S. policy guidelines to transition the country's electricity and vehicle infrastructure to renewable energy, according to a University of Michigan study.

The Inflation Reduction Act, signed into law in 2022, calls for 100% of cars manufactured to be electric vehicles by 2035. But an electric vehicle requires three to five times as much copper as an internal combustion engine vehicle—not to mention the copper required for upgrades to the electric grid.

"A normal Honda Accord needs about 40 pounds of copper. The same battery electric Honda Accord needs almost 200 pounds of copper. Onshore wind turbines require about 10 tons of copper, and in offshore wind turbines, that amount can more than double," said Adam Simon, U-M professor of earth and environmental studies...

There was a time, maybe as little as ten years ago, that I bought into the idea that electric cars are "green," and thus sustainable. I changed my mind.

Older now, as the end of my life approaches, I have come to understand that no avenue exists to make the car CULTure sustainable. I fully realize that this is a hypocritical position, since I drive a car, a hybrid, which on my grid, PJM. is slightly less dirty , in carbon dumping terms, than an electric car and/or an internal combustion engine car.

I have been pronuclear since 1987, well before DU existed, once I came to understand what the consequences of that worst possible of all nuclear "accidents," Chernobyl, actually was, compared to what I expected based on barely literate media interpretations.

However when I came to DU, in 2002, I was also a fan of so called "renewable energy" believing, incorrectly as it turned out, that "renewable energy" had something to do with sustainability and the elimination of dangerous fossil fuels, which has turned out to be completely untrue. Nevertheless I believed this when I came here over 20 years ago.

I was wrong. I changed my mind:

Experiment invalidates theories that conflict with results:

When I came to DU in November of 2002, the concentration of the dangerous fossil fuel waste CO₂ was 374.14 ppm. As of this writing, for the week beginning September 14, 2025, it was 423.98 ppm.

The so called "renewable energy," experiment, widely embraced by humanity at a cost of trillions of dollars, has done nothing to address extreme global heating. Things are getting worse, faster. We are using more fossil fuels than ever. Moreover, the material and land costs of so called "renewable energy" suggest that it is neither sustainable nor environmentally acceptable.

The "report" at the link is actually a university press release. We see a lot of university press releases here about "breakthroughs" in batteries, solar cells, wind turbines, blah, blah, blah. It's been going on here for more than 20 years, but the results are clear enough, again, to repeat, Things are getting worse, faster. All these "breakthroughs" haven't meant a damned thing.

The "report" links to a "study" put together by the IEF, the International Energy Forum, which describes itself as follows in the study:

The International Energy Forum (IEF) is the world’s largest international organization of energy ministers from 73 countries and includes both producing and consuming nations. The IEF has a broad mandate to examine all energy issues, including oil and gas, clean and renewable energy, sustainability, energy transitions and new technologies, data transparency, and energy access. Through the Forum and its associated events, officials, industry executives, and other experts engage in a dialogue of increasing importance to global energy security and sustainability.

As for the existence of oft evoked "energy transitions" or "energy transition," I rather see them as equivalent in reality to Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer and his bright nose.

The "study" in the report's link is here:

Copper Mining and Vehicle Electrification

Downloads are free; registration is required.

The authors are academics, one of whom has emeritus status, who before becoming an academic worked for Kennecott, the mining company that produces metals, including copper.

In the addendum to the report, there's a nice list of the world's top copper ore producing mines:



It seems that the mine in the picture at the link opening this post is not the Morenci mine listed in the table. Apparently it's one of the three much smaller copper mines in Arizona located in Pima County.

We may compare the table above with the soothsaying demand predicted if we continue to believe - despite the laws of thermodynamics and other laws of physics and chemistry - that electricity is or will be "green." (There are, of course, a lot of people, lulled into a kind of narcotic haze by pictures of one time wilderness transformed into industrial parks for wind and solar energy, that electricity is already "green." It isn't. The majority of the world's electricity is thermodynamically degraded primary energy from the combustion of dangerous fossil fuels.)

Here's a soothsaying graphic about copper demand from the report:



There is a kind of glib belief - more faith based than reality based - that we are going to mine our way out of extreme global heating.

That's not going to happen.

So called "renewable energy" has not reduced the use of dangerous fossil fuels, is not reducing the use of dangerous fossil fuels, and won't reduce the use of dangerous fossil fuels. On the contrary, so called "renewable energy" depends entirely on access to dangerous fossil fuels, and there is not, and almost certainly never will be, enough holes in the Earth to pull out copper to make it happen.

Of course, the enthusiasm for so called "renewable energy" was really never about addressing the ongoing collapse of the planetary atmosphere. On the contrary it was always about attacking - regrettably successfully - the only sustainable form of primary energy that exists, nuclear energy. In terms of copper use efficiency, a generator that is attached to a turbine that can run, for years at a time, at 100% capacity utilization is better than a vast array of wind turbines that have a capacity utilization of 30% or less.

Have a pleasant weekend.

[multigraincracker]

1. Earth can only sustain 1/3 of the current

Human population.

[littlemissmartypants]

2. Duke Energy in NC...

Literally burns pulp wood* chips to produce electricity and calls it "renewable" because we can grow more pine trees. I know this because I've seen it with my own eyes on a visit to one of the generator sites.

I find this fact disgusting.

As usual, I always learn something new and enjoy reading your posts.

Thank you.

*not to be confused with wood pulp, which is a different thing entirely and is used to make paper products

[NNadir]

3. An possibly worse case is the Drax plant in the UK, which is strip mining North American forests to be "renewable."

Drax Makes a Mockery of International Day of Forests

The new report shows that last year Drax sourced over 8 million tonnes of wood, burning almost 6 million tonnes of it in its North Yorkshire power station. Drax’s global wood supply came from:

The United States (over 5 million tonnes), where logging for wood pellets in the U.S. Southeast is occuring in a global biodiversity hotspot.

Canada (over 2 million tonnes), where recent investigations found new evidence suggesting that Drax’s 2023 operations sourced wood from threatened old-growth forests.

Estonia (over 86 thousand tonnes), where investigations in 2022 found evidence indicating wood pellets were being sourced from forests containing habitat for rare and imperilled species.

Portugal (over 35 thousand tonnes) where a new investigation revealed evidence indicating that wood sourced by a Drax supplier in the country has been clearcut from an ecologically important nature reserve...

Interestingly, the report is from the NRDC, which has no problem being in favor of converting huge tracts of wilderness into industrial parks for solar and wind. They refer to a "study" of the type reported by the "I'll sue you if you say I'm wrong" Stanford Asshole Mark Z. Jacobsen, that solar and wind can provide all of the the UK's energy.

The "Natural Resources Defense Council" strikes me as having a set of appalling blinders on with respect to natural resources. They remind me rather of the Sierra Club, which never sees a wilderness that they think should be made into an industrial park for solar and wind, even though their founder, John Muir, founded the organization to fight the industrialization of the Hetch Hetchy valley wilderness in Yosemite, a battle he lost.

Apparently the Drax "coal to biomass" plant needed to fire up quite a bit during periods of low wind speed.

The term "renewable energy" consists of one word that is obviously fraudulent.

Thank you, as always, for your kind words.

[John ONeill]

4. Finland

New study from LUT university in Finland about how much cheaper they can decarbonise with wind and solar, than with more nuclear (already at 38% of their power.) Apparently, according to their apologist on ex-Twitter, they'd need just as much new transmission for nuclear as for wind and solar. When I pointed out that the country only averages 3 hours sunlight per day all winter, he goes 'we balance with biomass.' Me - Finnish biomass is 230 grams CO2/kW hour, Finnish nuclear 5 g.
https://t.co/ze3B6dSe1E
A previous work by Mark Jacobson on the wonderful prospects for '100% WindWaterSolar' in Finland got a local response
https://passiiviidentiteetti.wordpress.com/2016/01/02/part-1-why-does-mark-jacobson-hate-finland/

[NNadir]

5. That paper brings out all the shibboleths of the antinuke cults, and in fact, their contempt for wilderness.

I seem to recall reading somewhere - possibly somewhat apocryphal - that one of the motivations for European colonization of North America was that Europe was running quite short of wood.

The Drax solution - that these awful people Finns indorse to address those months of Dunkelflaute - is not "renewable." Forests that are strip mined do not regenerate all that rapidly, if in fact they regenerate at all. Then too, with extreme global heating, the forests may burn, as they are apparently doing in Canada, before they've can be strip mined and burned in a Rankine steam powerplant.

The complaints about the availability of uranium are just nonsense. The key to addressing it, while simultaneously neutering proliferation concerns, is to switch to a plutonium economy driven by highly complex isotopic vectors, and uranium to also possess, similarly, complex isotopic vectors.

It is clear that most people who complain about nuclear energy do so from a perspective of extreme ignorance of the technology, and even when the are knowledgeable about the technology, they engage in selective attention.

I would think that in Finland, where they've gone through a rather messy FOAKE experience with their EPR, they might well consider taking what they've learned to do it again. Otherwise the experience and knowledge is lost.

Jacobson is a horseman of the apocalypse, an appalling fool, and if nothing, Finland expresses the depth of his myopia.

Thanks for your comment.