By Kieran Baker
According to the latest report in a new copper supply & demand outlook, by Fitch Solutions, global refined copper will grow steadily over the coming years, driven by demand from the power industry and rising electric vehicle (EV) production.
Fitch forecasts that global copper demand will increase from 23.6mnt in 2018 to 29 .8mnt by 2027, at 2.6% annual growth.
It makes sense that mining companies are searching worldwide for copper projects amid the forecasts that demand for the red metal will significantly outstrip supply from 2020; there are 300kg of copper in an electric bus alone and nine tonnes per wind-farm megawatt.
It seems like brown is becoming the new green.
All of the innovations designed to slow climate change by using alternative energy require one indispensable element: copper. It will take an estimated five times more copper for advanced systems, such as windmills and solar panels to generate electrical power; it will take more copper to develop and manufacture new battery technologies that store more energy, more copper is needed for efficient electric cars and appliances; and even more copper to bring our country’s power distribution up to date.
That’s a lot of copper.
Alaska has it.This green revolution also needs cobalt, which is an essential ingredient to optimizing the performance of batteries in the growing number of electric vehicles on global highways, yet essentially none of this battery metal is mined in the United States.
The US gets about 75 percent of its cobalt supply from overseas suppliers, with the rest coming from recycling. That is going to need to change if the US is to secure it’s own sources of critical metals; those countries with access to these essential natural resources will spearhead the next green hi-tech industrial revolution, dubbed the 4ID, as it brings together everything from the Internet of Things to robotics to artificial intelligence.
The good news is that there are a number of deposits and prospects in Alaska that could provide the United States domestic sources of cobalt, one, including the high-grade Bornite copper deposit at Trilogy Metal Inc.'s Upper Kobuk Mineral Project in the Ambler Mining District.
However, like climate change, we need to act fast, as the USGS’s annual survey of Mineral Commodity Summaries, last year, forecast that the rechargeable battery sector will drive the demand of cobalt even higher and potentially faster than the mining sector can get the supply of this key battery metal to market.
This limited supply could affect U.S. carmakers such as Tesla Inc.’ and it’s not just EV’s that require these unique minerals: cobalt is needed in parts for aircraft turbine engines, in magnet appliances, missile guidance systems, radar and much more.
Trilogy Metals has been working in the Ambler mining district since 2004, and in 2011 it entered into a long-term cooperative agreement with NANA Regional Corporation Inc., across a 355,385-acre land package, which allows for a framework for exploration and development of this high-grade, polymetallic belt.
There is a conundrum here that is both ironic & important for the future of our planet; the need to balance out mining and the environmental consequences that come from that, with the need to access more copper & cobalt to power the necessary changes we need to make in order to get climate change under control. At least we can say that one advanced stage exploration project in Alaska, is looking into the potential of producing cobalt alongside copper, making America's 49th State the potential primary destination for the domestic source of these critical metals.
Kieran Baker is a journalist and a former Director of Business Development at ArcticToday.com