Episode 14: Sustainable Mining & the Future of Copper

In this episode, we sit down with Andrea Vaccari from Freeport to explore the rising demand for copper and its crucial role in the clean energy transition. From electric vehicles to wind turbines, copper is everywhere—but how will we meet skyrocketing demand sustainably? We discuss challenges in mining, the shift toward responsible sourcing, and why designing for disassembly is key to a circular economy. Whether you're in product design, manufacturing, or just curious about the future of sustainable materials, this episode is packed with insights you won’t want to miss!

In this Episode 

Shelley: One of the things I think is interesting and I think would be great to have you introduce to the listeners is the role of copper in the clean energy transition, because I don't think everyone appreciates how much metal is going to be needed to make that work. And it's also great context for those listening who might use copper or metal in their products. [00:44 ] 

Andrea: That's right. Copper and molybdenum especially are really, really critical for the energy transition. When you think about all of our low carbon or zero carbon forms of energy. So we think about solar, when we think about wind, when we think about hydrothermal, even just thinking about LNG and how LNG actually provides power to a grid, copper's in all of that. In wind turbines, offshore wind turbines need lots of copper. I think actually a few tons of copper per wind turbine to be able to not only power the wind turbine, but then the deep sea cables that connect them and that connect them back to the grid. We think about solar power and it’s not just a solar cell; there are batteries involved. And how do you tie a battery storage device to infrastructure and to the Internet? That's copper. [01:02 ] 

The simplest things, like developing nations, as they come along in the energy transition in a just way and we improve their grids, those are full of copper. Transformers, cabling in houses, as we improve green buildings, it's just everywhere. It really is. And then molybdenum is used in stainless steel and it's used in a number of other applications, but stainless steel especially and we know how much that's used in building and construction, bridges, all kinds of different applications for the energy transition. [02:07 ] 

Shelley: Is it possible to give us any numbers for that, like forecasting 5, 10, 30 years, like how much is needed? [02:36 ] 

Andrea: Right now the total refined copper market annually is in between 25 to 30 million tons a year and we expect that to double by 2050. Now you hear all kinds of different things. So, you hear people talk about doubling, tripling, quadrupling. I don't know, the way that I look at it is whatever number we come up with, we're always going to have the wrong number. But I think there's general consensus that it is at least twice. Just take like an electric car. So, if you take an internal combustion engine vehicle and then you take a fully battery electric car like a Tesla or a Mercedes, you're talking about three to four times the amount of copper per vehicle. And then you've got charging stations which are full of copper. [02:44 ] 

Neil:. Some of these models don't even consider the development that you see in countries which are not electrified yet. So, India for the largest part isn't really electrified and in the next 10 years we will see a huge part of that also taking shape. So, I think you're right. Some of the numbers that I have in my mind, more short term where we'll be needing 50% more copper than what we have right now in the next 10 years. And that's a crazy amount of growth that's needed. It's not 30 years from now or 25 years from now, it's, it's 10 years and to increase by 50% is crazy. [03:36 ] 

Andrea: It's massive. I think between the 1980s until 2020 ish, I think we basically almost doubled the refined market and then it's set to double again. That requires a lot of growth. It requires both primary and secondary. What are you going to do? Pull the copper out of the building so you can recycle it? Copper has such a long life and so you have a limited amount that you can make up from recycling. It's a huge opportunity for the mining industry. But we don't have two times as much water, we don't have two times as much natural resources to make each ton of copper. So, Freeport's view is we have to do that responsibly. We're accelerating the future responsibly, but that's going to require a huge amount of innovation by all primary producers. [04:14 ] 

Neil: What are the biggest barriers to us getting there? Let's take a short-term perspective. I think long term we can create lots of fantasies, but I have engineers and we're trying to help them build better products. They're not going to build them without copper and assuming that they'll need 50% more in the next 10 years than what they have access to right now, what are the big barriers to producing that much more and where will we get it from in current planning? [05:04 ] 

Andrea: I'll start with where it will come from. One of the big dynamics that we've seen in the last few years is that the amount of copper coming from developing nations is higher; that sort of shift is happening. Chile remains the largest copper producer in the world. It's around 30% of the world's copper. Peru used to be number two. Now the DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo) there's been a ton of investment and there's lots of relatively high-grade copper there. Multiple mines have come online there in the last 10, 15 years. We had one of them, which we sold called Tenke Fungurume to a Chinese company, and so there's a huge amount of investment that's happened there. Peru has had some unrest in the last few years politically so it's kind of fallen behind a little bit in investment.  But we have a have a huge mine in Peru called Cerro Verde, which is crucial for the Peruvian economy and the second largest city there, Arequipa. But what we see is those developing nations starting to have mines developed because in developed nations we have great difficulty with permitting. In can take in the United States and other developed nations a huge amount of time to go from the initial drill holes to a productive mine. It can take 20, 25 years. It's not just a permitting issue, but it certainly is a significant issue. It's an issue in Chile as well. The Chilean government is working on permitting reforms. The US government is trying to figure out how to do that better as well. But then also free prior and informed consent of indigenous peoples is an issue as well. So ensuring that you're working really, really closely with local communities and indigenous peoples from the very beginning of drilling, even just exploration stage, which is different than it used to be. So learning how to do that, learning how to do that well, and it's not easy, right? I mean the copper price basically needs to be above $4 a pound for companies like ours - we're a large Fortune 500 mining company - for companies like ours to invest in a 20-to-30-year time frame. [05:32 ] 

Andrea: That's like 20 years before you start making any money and boards of directors are highly critical of where we actually put our resources. So what's happened now? Like I said you have this shift that's happening: DRC used to be like 5% of the world's copper and now it's increasing and increasing and increasing. And there's some geopolitical power shifts happening. You've got prices that need to remain around $4 for us to stick in there for 20, 25 years, and then now you have the expectation of free prior and informed consent for any large project, which also takes a lot of work and a lot of time. [07:43 ] 

Shelley: I was going to ask, how does sustainability fit into this? I know you've had some involvement in the Copper Mark, maybe let us know about that and what sustainable copper and metals looks like these days. [08:22 ] 

Andrea: Like I was saying before, we don't have two times the water, we don't have two times the energy, we don't have two times the resources or people even to work at these mines to develop all that extra volume. And what we look at is really being a responsible producer and the whole copper industry. This is a great opportunity but it's also a huge challenge for us all. When I was working for the International Copper Association, I was there from 2016 to 2019, we created something called The Copper mark. The Copper Mark is essentially a responsible production validation process. It's 33 criteria that range everything from corruption and bribery to business integrity, compliance, human rights, indigenous peoples, as I was speaking before, environmental management, tailings management, everything you could think of when you think of what are the main, quote unquote, potential sustainability impacts of a mine. Essentially that whole framework or those 33 criteria have to be validated by a third party, basically audited, just to use plain language, it has to be audited every three years by a third party and every four or five years the criteria get tougher. For example, we just had our Cerro Verde mine, whi