[HN Gopher] A looming copper crunch and why recycling can't fix it
___________________________________________________________________
A looming copper crunch and why recycling can't fix it
Author : simonebrunozzi
Score : 75 points
Date : 2022-07-31 19:35 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.mining.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.mining.com)
| amluto wrote:
| Some cursory searching suggests that between 40 and 50% of copper
| is used in building construction. I don't know the further
| breakdown, but:
|
| Copper is widely used for flashing. For this application,
| galvanized steel, aluminum, and stainless steel can substitute.
| All are less expensive.
|
| Copper is used for pipes. They are _much_ more expensive than
| plastics. Arguably, depending on the particular application, one
| or more plastic options are as good or better. (Copper is
| unharmed by moderate chlorine concentrations and sunlight. It's
| mechanically strong. It's inert to water at appropriate pH. It is
| quite reactive to water at the wrong pH. Boiler condensate will
| quickly destroy it.)
|
| Copper is used for heavy-gauge electrical wire. For many of these
| applications, aluminum is much less expensive and arguable
| superior (it's lighter and more flexible).
|
| Copper is used for 12 and 14 gauge branch circuits. Aluminum
| branch circuits are currently strongly discouraged.
|
| In any event, a lot of copper is consumed for applications that
| don't need it. If prices go up, the industry can adapt.
| version_five wrote:
| > Copper is used for 12 and 14 gauge branch circuits. Aluminum
| branch circuits are currently strongly discouraged.
|
| Maybe you're already saying this: there was a period (maybe
| ~70s) where aluminum was used for household wiring because of
| the advantages you mention. Unfortunately it oxidizes resulting
| in higher resistance leading to heat and potentially fire at
| connections. Where I am, insurers ask you if you have aluminum
| wiring when you buy a house (and penalize you for it), and it
| is generally regarded as a failed experiment.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Yep. Aluminum wiring can be safe, but you need to coat all
| the connections with anti-oxidizing grease. And even at at
| that, I don't know how long it lasts.
|
| Copper pipe for water is often specified by code in
| commercial construction. I've heard this is due to lobbying
| by plumber's unions but not sure about that. Most residential
| construction will use CPVC or PEX these days.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| I am a huge fan of PEX from a cost and longevity
| perspective (it can withstand some freezing of water
| without bursting), but copper is cool for its anti
| microbial and similar chemical resistance properties. If
| money was no object, I'd spec copper over plastics for
| water supply if I expected the structure to exist for
| 50-100 years. Disposable structures? Plastics all the way,
| dump the whole thing in a plasma gasifier upon retirement.
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| Not just pipes but also fittings and valve assemblies mostly in
| brass
| labrador wrote:
| I hope people realize this is the solution and not the Pebble
| Mine in Alaska
|
| https://www.kuow.org/stories/copper-versus-salmon-why-an-ala...
| ThunderSizzle wrote:
| Probably completely anecdote evidence, but plastic piping needs
| to be replaced every 20-ish years, while copper has easily last
| multiple decades.
|
| 20 years is fine assuming all the piping is easy to get to
| (e.g. around a hot water heater). A lot of piping is not and
| would require refinishing quite of a bit of piping.
|
| My research seems to indicate most residential plastic tubing
| still has a lifetime of 20 years, from what I can tell.
| aardvarkr wrote:
| A quick google search shows that pvc piping has a lifespan of
| 100 years.[0] Please edit your post to acknowledge this.
|
| [0] https://www.ipexna.com/media/3074/pvc-pipe-longevity-
| report....
| jefftk wrote:
| 20 years sounds really short to me? I've seen numbers quoted
| anywhere from 30 to 50 for PEX.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Yeah I know of CPVC piping that is at well over 20 years
| and still OK. It does get brittle with age though.
| just_boost_it wrote:
| I'm in a 25 year old building and we had to replace all the
| plastic piping last year. The pipes became fragile and
| started randomly bursting. In about 50 apartments, we were
| having about 2 leaks a year, and were finding it hard to
| find plumbing companies to actually repair them.
| jti107 wrote:
| i might have missed it in the article but it seems the issue is
| that there arent enough mines coming online to meet the new
| demand NOT that we dont have enough copper. it is about the same
| abundance as zinc and nickel. this is where the free market
| should help, if the price goes up enough it should incentivize
| companies to open more mines and possibly innovate new mining
| methods.
| nick__m wrote:
| the article address that : While there is
| enough copper in the world, geologically speaking, to supply
| the increased demand, there isn't enough time. It
| takes 10 to 15 years to get a new copper mine through
| permitting and construction. Twenty years is not unusual for
| very large projects.
| stevenjgarner wrote:
| It will be interesting to see to what extent either other
| conductors (such as graphene, one of the best conductors [0]) or
| asteroid mining for iron, copper, nickel, and cobalt [1] become
| feasible in time (mid-century?) to offset the shortage of copper.
|
| [0] https://www.nanowerk.com/what_is_graphene.php
|
| [1] https://pwr.edu.pl/en/university/news/raw-materials-from-
| ast...
| stevenjgarner wrote:
| Not much discussion on HN yet about "the looming copper crunch"
| - these postings all had no comments:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32111282
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32101391
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28710646
| onion2k wrote:
| _If the number of EVs on the road today remained static for the
| next 20 years, recycling the metals in them might be able to make
| up the bulk of the demand. But EV sales are growing
| exponentially._
|
| Why would car manufacturers be limited to copper from cars? For
| example, there's huge amounts of copper in telecoms
| infrastructure that's being replaced with fibre at the moment.
| The originating source of the metal is irrelevant. The only
| things that matter at purity, contaminants, and cost. If the
| copper is sufficiently high quality, doesn't contain anything
| that would stop it being used in a battery or a motor, and it's
| cheap enough, then it's all good.
| jmclnx wrote:
| Well, in the US maybe time to eliminate the 1, 5 and maybe 10
| cent coins ?
|
| Yes, the 1 cent coins have little copper, but multiple millions
| are produced per year. The others have a copper core. With
| current inflation, 1/5/10 cent coins cannot buy anything.
|
| The only reason for the 25 cent coin are vending machines.
| ravenstine wrote:
| Not much copper in those unless you collect pre-1982 pennies.
| New pennies have such a thin layer of copper plating that
| separating that would be more trouble than it's worth.
|
| EDIT: Darn, can't delete now. Yes I agree, the penny should be
| eliminated to save on copper.
| jmclnx wrote:
| true, but with the number of these made each years, they add
| up. Plus all these do is cost everyone money to handle
| (banks, shops and even the Gov).
| brtkdotse wrote:
| Is physical currency still common in the US? I haven't used
| physical currency in probably 5-6 years, outside the 10 SEK the
| tooth fairy leaves.
| kube-system wrote:
| It depends on what side of town you're on. There is a big
| class and culture gap in the US financial system. Everyone on
| this forum from the US likely is well banked. But a large
| chunk of the US is not. A large number of people either do
| not meet the requirements (undocumented immigrants), distrust
| the system, or don't meet minimum balance requirements (or
| don't want to deal with those requirements).
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/08/25percent-of-us-
| households-a...
|
| https://www.npr.org/2021/04/05/984475870/unbanked-what-it-
| me...
| jeltz wrote:
| Minimum balance requirements? Why is that a thing?
| kube-system wrote:
| Banks make money by lending on deposits. If you have no
| deposits, they can't make any money. Although, almost
| universally, banks will allow you to pay a few dollars
| per month for your account instead. But, people who don't
| have very much money usually don't have much of a need to
| spend spend money for a service to hold on to their
| money, because they don't have any.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| But it still needs an explanation because European banks
| don't charge for a current account.
| nradov wrote:
| Prepaid debit cards are now widely used by unbanked people
| in the US. Some employers will even do direct deposit to
| those cards.
| kube-system wrote:
| This is true, but cash is still widely used by the
| unbanked as well. Go to a grocery store in a poor part of
| town and you will see plenty of cash being handled at the
| checkouts.
| mikewarot wrote:
| Internet isn't quite reliable in the US, it's good to have
| some cash on hand in the event things go down.
|
| I tip in cash, so that taxes aren't taken out of an already
| underpaid person's "wages".
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| Come to Austria. The entire country revolves around cash.
|
| I rarely see someone pay with card at the supermarket and
| it's most likely a foreigner. Small shops and cafes don't
| even take cards, only cash and the rare time they do it's
| only for larger sums.
|
| Also tips are common almost everywhere.
| brnt wrote:
| I learned to avoid lines with old people in France, because
| they will be paying with cash or even worse, cheques.
|
| Yes, I've heard all about the benefits of cash on HN, but
| the millions of man years saved by not standing in line has
| to be worth something too. One Auchan was boasting that
| they got line time down to 4 minutes. In NL, anythng longer
| than 30 seconds is unusual.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| NL is a more modern country with a forward thinking
| population. Germany and Austria are more backwards and
| conservative.
|
| If you come to Austrian supermarkets at rush hour, the
| lines will last several minutes. It not uncommon to hear
| disgruntled customers (usually old people ironically)
| yell at supermarket employees to open another till after
| waiting for ages.
| givemeethekeys wrote:
| I've heard similar about Germany (someone from Germany,
| please chime in).
|
| There's a lovely under-appreciated privacy about using
| cash.
| cannam wrote:
| I'm not from Germany, but I just came back (to the UK)
| from a holiday spent partly in Germany and partly in
| Denmark.
|
| In Germany I paid cash for every casual snack-grade
| transaction, and some bigger ones like restaurant meals.
| It seemed totally normal and I was happy with that.
|
| In Denmark I never saw the currency at all and I have no
| idea what it looks like. I never used it and I never saw
| anyone else use it. Contactless everywhere.
|
| I much prefer cash and regret its disappearance from use
| in my own country - we are about half-way between the
| German and Danish experiences above, perhaps closer to
| the Danish end. A holiday in Germany felt more like a
| holiday because of this detail. What it feels like when
| you actually live there is another question.
|
| But this stuff about cash is something of a distraction
| from the question of metal use - it's increasingly
| apparent that although electric cars may be an
| improvement on oil-driven ones, they are not in any
| useful way the solution. Being rid of cars and basically
| all powered individual transport may be both dreary and
| extreme, but what alternative is there?
| enlyth wrote:
| I live in the UK and don't think I've used cash for at
| least three years if not longer, at least I can't
| remember the last time I did and I love it.
|
| I understand the concerns about everything being logged
| digitally, but it is just so much more convenient than
| carrying a bulky wallet with a coin pouch, and messing
| around with coins at the till holding everyone up for
| ages. For some reason people think it's a binary choice
| between privacy or convenience, but it doesn't have to be
| that way.
|
| I have started going out without my wallet recently, one
| less thing to lose, and just paying with my phone
| everywhere.
| djbusby wrote:
| Phone and wallet together. Now I can lose two very
| important things in one easy step.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| Meh, since everything on your phone is digital, loosing
| it and restoring everything including your digital wallet
| is a few taps away after buying a new phone.
|
| Meanwhile when you loose your physical wallet, it takes
| day or weeks, plus trips and legal paperwork to issue new
| cards, IDs, driver's license, etc. It's a complete
| nightmare.
| nradov wrote:
| There is really no need to get rid of all powered
| individual transport. That is basically an ideological
| position, not a scientific one. It has basically become a
| modern secular religion, where people feel the need to
| atone for the "sin" of harming the environment, and want
| to forcibly convert the rest of us heathens.
|
| Anthropomorphic global climate change is absolutely a
| real problem and we should do more to reduce carbon
| emissions. But reliable, high-speed personal mobility has
| brought about a tremendous improvement in quality of
| life. There's no way I'll agree to give up owning
| personal cars.
| cannam wrote:
| > There is really no need to get rid of all powered
| individual transport. That is basically an ideological
| position, not a scientific one.
|
| Nah. I used to hope that moving propulsion to the
| electric grid would allow us to use renewables to drive
| transport and so do it all for almost nothing. And I also
| thought that it was vital to sell a solution, to come up
| with replacements that people would not just accept but
| actively choose. And that these could lead to a
| sustainable world.
|
| But it's not true. It's wishful thinking, the dreamer's
| position, it's the ideological one. The scientific
| position is that none of this is remotely enough, for
| reasons like those discussed in the article above. Cars
| will be got rid of, one way or another - we don't have
| the resources to sustain them except at the cost of,
| well, us. The question is just whether we can find a way
| to sell that idea to ourselves and reorganise ourselves
| before it happens for us.
|
| As I said, it's dreary and it feels extreme and I don't
| like it, but I don't see what alternative there is. The
| brilliant and engaging ideas just don't add up.
| helloguillecl wrote:
| Quasi-german here. Cash is still king in Germany as of
| 2022.
|
| It has gotten better after the Pandemic.
|
| Germans use outdated tech because it works. They use cash
| very rapidly and efficiently. I'd say Germans handle cash
| faster than paying with physical cards.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> Germans use outdated tech because it works._
|
| That's not a good argument for progress in general. We'd
| still be in the stone age with that mentally.
|
| This is also a reflection on the lack of digitalization
| and IT/tech innovation in Germany and Austria in general
| vs other European countries that tend to adopt tech
| earlier.
|
| _> I'd say Germans handle cash faster than paying with
| physical cards._
|
| I'd beg to differ when there's lots of change and coins
| involved.
|
| Some could be fast with an abacus but that doesn't mean
| we're not all better off with pocket calculators.
|
| Like with many things, just because that's how Germany
| does a thing, doesn't mean it's great.
| helloguillecl wrote:
| Im very critical of Germany, and I think they have lost
| the leadership in too many regards.
|
| But I think people miss how well do things work in
| Germany despite the low (IT) tech. I didn't understand it
| until I moved here.
| onion2k wrote:
| Fun fact about cash payments in Germany - they're all
| reported to the government in real time. There used to be
| fiscalization rules that meant Point of Sale devices had
| to store 5 years worth of transaction data for auditing,
| but recently theyve moved to just having the POS report
| everything directly over the Internet. Lots of countries
| do the same sort of thing.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiscalization
| enlyth wrote:
| Anecdote but I was there a few weeks ago and did have a
| similar experience. It was really annoying, so many small
| shops chose not to take card, and as tourists you usually
| get screwed on the exchange rates if you need cash. Also
| a concert with 20k people attending, none of the card
| machines worked, and no one seemed to kick up a fuss just
| paid cash, while we had none with us so had to "enjoy" it
| without drinks or food.
| sva_ wrote:
| Cash is still king in Germany, but use of "contactless"
| payment methods have drastically increased in the
| pandemic.
|
| Small shops often prefer or only take cash, or accept
| card payment only from a certain amount due to fees of
| the processors. I heard small businesses prefer cash for
| tax reasons as well.
| benmanns wrote:
| Tax reasons means evading taxes by not reporting cash
| transactions.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| It's also super annoying to wait in line at the
| supermarket until all banknotes, coins and pennies are
| exchanged and counted between each customer and the
| supermarket employee vs paying by card wich takes 2-5s.
| It adds up to minutes wasted nearly every day.and
| probably weeks/months over a lifetime. Plus the CO2 to
| transport cash back and forth.
|
| But most seriously, cash payments enable tons of tax
| fraud, especially by business owners in the hospitality
| industry, making it unfair to those with jobs who pay
| nearly half their salary in tax, while Gastro owners will
| buy another Porsche or vacation home from the taxes they
| dodged thanks to cash payments.
|
| I hope they ban cash, it's annoying, time wasting,
| environmentally unfortunately and makes life super easy
| for tax fraudsters to the detriment of those who have to
| pay their taxes fairly.
|
| The privacy reason is some hypocritical bullshit, as
| those same people using exclusively cash, carry privacy
| invasive Apple/Android phones and constantly use spying
| services of Google, Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp,
| Tinder, Snapchat, etc. The real "privacy" they're
| referring to means privacy from the taxman for their
| illicit financial gains, a.k.a. tax fraud. That's the
| real reason, and I hope it gets cracked down.
| shrimp_emoji wrote:
| >Going to the supermarket instead of getting groceries
| delivered
|
| In what universe
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| Who are you quoting? I never said that.
| jessaustin wrote:
| Parent was trying to be charitable. Apparently your time
| is quite valuable, so that it is a serious imposition to
| find oneself ahead of you in a supermarket queue. Since
| your time is so valuable, we'd all breathe easier if you
| would avail yourself of more significant time savers like
| the many grocery delivery services that are now
| available. Or perhaps you should hire a personal
| assistant to run your errands?
| nradov wrote:
| Grocery delivery services are mostly trash and don't save
| time; in my experience dealing with the hassles often
| takes _more_ time than just driving to the supermarket.
| The delivery windows are too wide, and often too far in
| the future. They don 't pick the right pieces of meat or
| produce. And if something is out of stock they pick an
| inappropriate substitute, not none at all.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| No need to be snarky. You can have efficient grocery
| shopping that saves everyone time if everyone paid by
| card/contactless like you see in NL or the Nordics
| instead of wasting time and resources counting coins and
| transporting them around when the digital alternative is
| so much more efficient.
|
| No need to create more CO2 for the packaging and
| transport of groceries to your door if the supermarket is
| on your way from work anyway. Plus you get to pick the
| exact fruits and veggies you like yourself.
|
| I assume you have a US viewpoint where grocery delivery
| is common but this is not a thing for consumers in
| Austria outside of the capital. It also costs extra so
| there's that.
| jessaustin wrote:
| I have never used grocery delivery; perhaps it has been
| available in my area for a couple of years. After we've
| been "locked down" for so long, it seems fortunate that
| we're able to enjoy the company of fellow citizens in the
| grocery store and various other locations where we all
| queue together. People have waited behind me in queue
| (and I've visited some benighted locales where queueing
| is a habit the public has not yet mastered), so I
| appreciate the opportunity to take the other side in this
| transaction. One character we _don 't_ need around is
| someone who feels like the line should move faster.
|
| Either you vastly exaggerate the time savings of card
| payments, or credit card machines in your community are
| more reliable than what we have here. Don't brag too hard
| about living in the future, however, because here we
| often have the option of self-checkout, which typically
| is faster than even looking at a cashier. (Unless one of
| the oldsters who annoy you so has wandered into that lane
| and now contemplates the scanner as if it were the
| cockpit of the Space Shuttle. In that case one might
| offer assistance? Most of our self checkouts take cash!)
|
| The day will come when all purchases will require the
| approval of several more parties than the buyer and the
| seller. We will not enjoy that circumstance, so people
| wiser (and perhaps less hurried?) than you will use cash
| as long as we can.
| fmakunbound wrote:
| What's the reasons for that?
| jbverschoor wrote:
| Same reason people DuckDuckGo. They have a stronger
| connection to the history of snooping on civilians
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| Easier tax fraud mostly to keep your illicitly gained
| money away from the taxman.
|
| Plus conservative population that is skeptical about new
| tech and strongly keeps outdated ways of working and
| doing business (visible in any company there). Letters
| are common as well and digitalization is pretty weak.
|
| Like what's the last tech product you remember that came
| out of Austria?
| overtonwhy wrote:
| Mostly only required for drugs and gambling these days.
| noah_buddy wrote:
| I carry cash almost entirely to tip servers and other service
| industry employees in cash. One Americanism for another, huh?
| But that's only bills, no coinage.
| jeltz wrote:
| On Sweden we usually tip with the same method of payment as
| we paid the bill with.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| You tip in Sweden? Who do you tip, and why? And why them
| and not others such as the cashier in a supermarket or a
| bus driver?
| noah_buddy wrote:
| I usually pay credit and tip cash because I expect more
| of it to make it to the servers and kitchen staff and
| less to the owner/none to CC companies.
| timoteostewart wrote:
| I don't see Sweden on this historical tracker of money left
| by the tooth fairy. The current U.S. average of $5.50 would
| be 55 SEK!
|
| https://www.deltadental.com/us/en/tooth-fairy/the-
| original-p...
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| I use it pretty much every day. Almost all restaurants and
| stores have an ATM, and when not, there's always one
| somewhere nearby.
|
| For me it's a matter of principle, I use cash because I want
| businesses to continue accepting cash. I have credit cards
| and I sometimes use them out of laziness (or for anything
| over $200 or so, or online...) But if a business refuses cash
| then I'll refuse to do business with them, because I think
| they're disenfranchising people who don't have credit cards
| and I won't support that. Thankfully this is fairly rare.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| > Almost all restaurants and stores have an ATM
|
| You should never use a private ATM. They are prime targets
| for skimmers.
| stevenjgarner wrote:
| The copper penny hoarders are beating you to it [0]. I met a
| "retired" guy who is driving around the US buying boxes of
| pennies from banks sorting them into copper or not. He sells
| the sorted copper pennies to penny hoarders [1] and uses the
| non-copper pennies to spend at the Walmart NCR cash registers
| (they have to love him). He said he does not get rich but makes
| enough to get by.
|
| We went out for a meal and discussed the feasibility of sorting
| the pennies by date using ML. The real gold mine would be that
| an AI approach might potentially identify numismatic grade
| pennies and really pay for itself.
|
| [0] https://www.wikihow.com/Hoard-Copper-Pennies
|
| [1] https://moneyning.com/make-money/how-to-cash-in-your-
| pennies...
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| Codyslab sorting copper pennies using magnetic inductance:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gM9mOk6eb8
|
| Seems very simple and low tech.
| shrubble wrote:
| There are slight differences in weight between the 1982 and
| later, and the copper containing pennies.
|
| You don't need to use ML, you need a comparator of the kind
| found in 1000s of vending machines.
| OJFord wrote:
| ML's just a comparator where the designer doesn't
| (necessarily) understand the logic, right?
| loa_in_ wrote:
| If you have an universal constructor, yes, it's going to
| be a problem that solves itself.
|
| In practice you need a high fidelity weight sensor and a
| handful of transistors.
| dehrmann wrote:
| What if we ran that ML on the etherium network?
| yieldcrv wrote:
| is that a large enough driver of demand?
| sva_ wrote:
| I'm actually quite fond of the 25 cent coins I got from the US.
| They work in shopping carts here (you have to put a coin into a
| shopping cart to get it, and you get the coin back after you
| bring it back, but they usually only accept 1 or 2 euro. I'm
| much more likely to still have the quarter, since I can't spend
| it here.)
|
| I got bunch of coins when I had to use a laundromat in the US
| once, they only accepted quarters. Exchange $20 at a different
| machine and get a ton of metal. I suppose its like legacy
| software.
| gerdesj wrote:
| Back in the late '70/early '80s the UK 10p coin was similar
| enough in size and weight to fool some German vending
| machines as a "1 DM" coin (Deutchmark). The rough rule of
| thumb rate of exchange was 1 GBP to 4 DM back then.
| sva_ wrote:
| A large number of European vending machines still accept
| the 10 thai baht coin as a 2 Euro coin (10 baht are approx.
| 30 cents).
|
| I heard the newer machines use a combination of methods,
| including weight and electrical resistance to test if a
| coin is actually the right one.
| JoshuaDavid wrote:
| The US mints about 8 billion pennies per year, which at 2.5g
| each and 2.5% copper, works out to about 500 metric tons of
| copper. Add in nickels (1.5B x 5g x 75% copper = 5600 metric
| tons), dimes (3B x 2.2g x 92% copper = 6100 metric tons Cu),
| and quarters (2.5B x 5.7g x 92% copper = 13000 metric tons
| copper).
|
| Which works out to just over 25000 metric tons of copper per
| year used in US coinage.
|
| About 2 million metric tons of copper are used in the US per
| year. So all coinage represents about 1.25% of US copper
| consumption, of which quarters are about half.
|
| There are some good reasons to eliminate small coinage, but "it
| will noticeably help with a copper shortage" isn't really one
| of them.
| light_hue_1 wrote:
| > Yes, the 1 cent coins have little copper, but multiple
| millions are produced per year
|
| Billions are produced per year, not millions. The mint makes on
| average 10 billion pennies per year,
| https://qz.com/1318203/making-pennies-costs-the-us-mint-mill...
| Varies by year.
|
| It is still a totally irrelevant amount of copper.
|
| One penny has 2.95g of copper in it. 10 billion pennies have
| 30,000 tons of copper in them. Worldwide copper production is
| 20 million tons. 0.015% of the world's copper is used for
| pennies. That's a rounding error.
|
| Just because a number is big, doesn't mean it matters.
|
| Sure. Get rid of the penny. But not because it will impact our
| copper supply in any way.
| sixstringtheory wrote:
| Still, I care less about relative quantities and more about
| what can be produced with the absolute amount at hand. How
| many houses, cars or circuit boards could be made with 30,000
| tons a year?
|
| There's always some bigger problem you can point to that
| seems to render the point at hand useless, but as they say,
| 30K tons of copper saved is 30K tons of copper earned.
| tedunangst wrote:
| What percentage of US copper consumption is devoted to penny
| production?
| tomnipotent wrote:
| All new pennies since 1983 are 98% zinc.
| twic wrote:
| > For some standard EV models, Ford will use lithium-iron-
| sulphate batteries
|
| Googled this, and google gave me a page full of results for
| lithium iron phosphate batteries. Not a single mention of
| sulphate (or sulfate). There are people actually getting paid a
| salary to do this.
| kccqzy wrote:
| It is actually similarly difficult to Google other new battery
| chemistries like lithium-iron-manganese-phosphate batteries
| (Google would confuse it with lithium ion manganese oxide
| batteries).
|
| Double quotes still help though.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Copper as a material is fairly unique in that many things we make
| of copper have alternatives that could be used if the cost was
| too high.
|
| For example, copper is used for water pipes. But we also have
| steel and plastic pipes.
|
| Copper is also used for wiring and electrical conductors - but we
| can redesign circuits to use higher voltages (double the voltage
| needs only one quarter of the copper). Or, we can switch to
| aluminium for wiring, which is also a good conductor.
|
| Plenty of users are already economical with copper. For example,
| have you noticed that if you buy a USB cable that's 1 meter it is
| _less than half the price_ of a 2 meter cable? Don 't you think
| that's odd, because presumably there is a fixed labour+materials
| cost for the connectors, and a per-meter cost for the cable
| itself? No... The USB specification requires a specific wire
| resistance, which means longer wires must also be thicker (more
| copper) to meet that spec. Lately, very cost sensitive USB wires
| have moved to aluminium conductors.
|
| There is talk of electric cars with 800 volt (vs 400 volt)
| battery systems... The main reason to switch is to reduce the
| cost of copper wires and motor coils.
| dangrossman wrote:
| > There is talk of electric cars with 800 volt (vs 400 volt)
| battery systems... The main reason to switch is to reduce the
| cost of copper wires and motor coils.
|
| It's not just talk, a number of EVs run at 800V (Porsche
| Taycan, Audi E-Tron GT, Lucid Air, Hyundai Ioniq 5, Kia EV6).
| And while there may be a cost benefit for the manufacturer, it
| also makes a more desirable car for the owner, since they can
| charge twice as fast. While most 400V EVs top out around 125 kW
| charging rates, the 800V EVs can hit mid-200s.
| dieselgate wrote:
| > Currently recycling (an EV battery) is an expensive process
| where North Americans are footing the bill," Chiang said. "That's
| why they're charging people thousands of dollars for recycling.
| That's why the stat is only 5% of all EV batteries are being
| recycled.
|
| Wow this was new for me, it makes plenty of sense to reuse the
| batteries when they're no longer sufficient for an automobile -
| but is that's something available to the general public?
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| I'm guessing Mining.com has a strong pro-mining take on many
| different topics.
| _whiteCaps_ wrote:
| I think this is originally from Business In Vancouver magazine:
| https://biv.com/article/2022/07/looming-copper-crunch-and-wh...
|
| (although replacing Mining.com with Vancouver would still be
| true)
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| I think it's an S&P Global report that they're all quoting.
|
| https://ihsmarkit.com/Info/0722/futureofcopper.html
|
| Not sure if that's available but the same source was
| expecting a mild glut of copper over the next few years due
| to new mines opening and no one seems to predict higher
| prices long term, so I think this might just be standard
| industry whining that taxes and health and safety and
| environmental laws are holding them back.
|
| > Even though a rise in demand is anticipated, this will not
| be enough to absorb the increase in supply, Commerzbank's
| commodities analyst Daniel Briesemann said in a note.
|
| > Also, the conspicuous supply difference is due to the
| expected noteworthy recovery in mine output.
|
| > According to ICSG, mine output >will rise by 3.9% due to
| the commissioning of several new projects and the expansion
| of existing mines, Briesemann said.
|
| > This was echoed by UK brokerage Marex Spectron, which said
| in a research note Dec. 7 that according to CRU -- a
| commodity research company -- the view is that after a
| deficit in 2021, the following two years are expected to see
| a surplus.
|
| > Aside primary copper production, an increase in secondary
| production, from scrap copper, was also likely to contribute
| to copper's surplus, Briesemann said.
| jmyeet wrote:
| It's good to highlight these issues but honestly I'm just not
| worried about that because this is the kind of thing that spurs
| innovation. That could be recycling more copper, using less
| copper, findin gnew sources of copper, finding alternatives to
| copper and so on.
|
| Remember that copper's primary use is as a conductor and there
| are lots of conductors from aluminium to gold.
|
| I don't expect fuel-based vehicles to go away completely because
| there are still use cases where fuel is better than electric.
| Cold conditions are still a problem for EVs. Range is another
| factor.
|
| What I expect to see more of is using renewables to store energy
| in the form of fuel instead of in batteries eg producing
| methanol, methane, ammonia or kerosene. This will at least be
| carbon neutral. It's not currently economic to do it but the
| advantage comes in not needing potentially expensive batteries,
| being relatively easy to store and not requiring power grid
| infrastructure in remote or unstable regions.
| antiquark wrote:
| Cars are here to stay, whether the collectivists like it or not.
| nayuki wrote:
| As if paving roads everywhere, providing free parking spots,
| and socializing the cost of collisions wasn't collectivist.
| Right.
| vkou wrote:
| Yes, and we can really stick it to the collectivists by
| spending ~$10-15,000/year per vehicle on the initial purchase
| of the car, and the associated costs of insurance, gas,
| maintenance, parking, and car-dedicated infrastructure.
| cercatrova wrote:
| In my years, I've often learned that only necessity will push
| people towards solutions. In this case with copper, only once we
| have used up most of the copper available easily will we truly
| start to care about extracting it in more efficient ways, whether
| it be through recycling or other means. If it's too easy to do
| the naive way, people just won't care about efficiency enough to
| do it the hard way.
|
| It's the same thing in software with bloat even as hardware gets
| faster. Rather, it is precisely because hardware gets faster that
| software engineers have little regard for the speed of their
| software, since any inefficiences will be overshadowed by the
| horsepower of the raw silicon. What Andy giveth, Bill taketh
| away, I've always known, but now I see it everywhere, not just in
| software.
| nayuki wrote:
| This is the inevitable outcome of continuing to uphold the status
| quo of the car-dominant society: shortages in gasoline, lithium,
| cobalt, copper, urban land, etc.
|
| We have to face the music: Converting gas cars to electric will
| only fix a small fraction of all the problems caused by cars.
| Redesigning cities so that most people won't require a car to
| work and live is the real solution.
| throwawaysleep wrote:
| Even in retaining current living standards, environmental
| action is an uphill battle.
| konschubert wrote:
| We need every possible contribution to fight the dooming
| climate emergency. Bicycles AND electric cars. Renewables AND
| nuclear AND carbon capture.
|
| I am very much against cars in cities, just like you, but this
| is an independent topic.
|
| If you try to fight climate change by banning cars you will run
| out of time and lose both fights.
| nayuki wrote:
| What you said is factually true, but I think there are bigger
| problems in context.
|
| Most people, having grown up with cars from parents and
| peers, can't imagine anything other than a car-centric life.
| The distances are too far, the bus comes once an hour, and
| biking is too dangerous. So getting an electric car might be
| the only improvement that they can think of. Especially given
| the upfront cost of electric cars and their reduced
| convenience for long road trips, it's easy to feel that they
| made enough personal sacrifices for the sake of the common
| good.
|
| While electric cars are a somewhat bitter pill to swallow,
| the real bitter pills are things like ending exclusive
| single-family detached house zoning, increasing density,
| allowing mixed residential-retail-office neighborhoods,
| converting car lanes to bike or transit lanes, building rail
| lines (which can easily take a decade), offering decent
| inter-city train service. I fear that electric cars offer an
| easy "personal responsibility" band-aid that exhausts
| people's willpower to demand more substantial collective
| change.
|
| > Don't hijack the climate emergency for your political
| agenda.
|
| What's with this accusation?
| nomel wrote:
| > the bus comes once an hour
|
| And takes many hours to travel the same distance as a 20
| minute car ride. People who say "just hop on public
| transportation" live in the top percent of cities where
| that actually makes sense.
| hunterb123 wrote:
| Some people have only lived in highly dense areas and can't
| imagine why you'd need a car in certain cities or regions.
|
| Those seem to be the people who push the car-less idea the
| most, because it meets their world view, but doesn't work
| once you step outside the downtown bubble.
|
| But what I think they want are solutions to the parking,
| traffic, and other issues that stem from city
| overpopulation and/or planning mismanagement of cities.
|
| As an outsider I agree cities need to rework how they
| handle cars (idling in traffic for an hour to go 10 miles,
| parking being hell, etc.) but it's a specific problem to
| cities (some more so than others)
| spookie wrote:
| Spot on. I really hope that through automation, rural
| public transportation becomes cheaper and more frequent
| as a result.
|
| I was lucky, since I lived in town, but my childhood
| friends would come to school by bus. It took them 3h to
| get here, the motorist had to cover all the tiny villages
| along the way, and time adds up. If we didn't have those
| buses (most of them were vans), well then, I don't think
| most kids would get their lessons.
|
| Who had cars though? No problem.
|
| But yeah, it's difficult to employ a system on a rural
| area.
| Scarblac wrote:
| Climate change is one crisis, but there will also be a crisis
| in availability of many resources (like copper).
| coldtea wrote:
| > _We need every possible contribution to fight the dooming
| climate emergency. Bicycles AND electric cars. Renewables AND
| nuclear AND carbon capture._
|
| How about less cars, less power use, and return to 1980s or
| 60s standards of technology?
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| I'm not sure I can think of anything that's less efficient
| now compared with 60s-80s tech? EV vs ICE, LED vs
| Incandescent and so on.
|
| What kind of things were you thinking of?
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| How about less cars, more efficient use of energy, cleaner
| power production, moving towards better standards of
| technology?
|
| We don't need to regress to solve the climate emergency.
| That's attacking the problem from the wrong side and
| alienating people.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| If it means my grandchildren would be significantly less
| likely to die in water or oil wars then I'd take that trade
| today.
| luckylion wrote:
| Not sure what we'd achieve by going back to less efficient
| technology. Miles per gallon almost doubled since 1980, so
| we'd need to get rid of 50% of cars just to break even on
| that front and the same is true for lots of things.
| schroeding wrote:
| With "returning to 60s or 80s standards of technology", do
| you mean repairability and great build quality? That would
| a great step towards a circular / no-waste economy :)
| nomel wrote:
| > repairability and great build quality
|
| Maybe build quality of the assembly, but definitely not
| the build quality of anything mechanical! Modern cars
| have ludicrously better reliability than anything from
| the 60's to 80's. A car not making it to 100k miles is a
| rare exception these days, even with somewhat abusive
| upkeep.
| specialist wrote:
| ...AND land use reforms.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| > We need every possible contribution to fight the dooming
| climate emergency. Bicycles AND electric cars. Renewables AND
| nuclear AND carbon capture.
|
| The problem is that some of these are working against each
| other. Electric cars means much much higher electrical energy
| needs - perhaps needing to even double the current grid. And
| that works against the need to decomission fossil fuel
| plants.
|
| As such, significantly reducing car usage seems like a much
| safer bet than achieving a 0-carbon grid that is double the
| size of the current one in ~15 years.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| EVs help renewable adoption, cleaning the grid as well as
| cleaning the city air.
|
| They're literally batteries on wheels.
| nradov wrote:
| How would you propose to significantly reduce car usage in
| 15 years? I've never seen a realistic plan for that which
| accounts for politics, funding, and the time required to
| build large infrastructure projects. Just pointing out that
| we ought to do it doesn't get us anywhere.
| acdha wrote:
| I think you could do a lot with quick-build bus and bike
| lanes, and some combination of pollution taxes and
| market-pricing for parking & high-demand roads/bridges. A
| lot of people will take a bus - it's so much cheaper &
| less stressful - but only if service is reliable so I'd
| focus on how you could remove delays there, and many
| things like bus priority lanes or enforcement can be
| implemented quickly at modest cost.
|
| The big question is politics: even in cities where many
| people use transit, the political class favors cars.
| hunterb123 wrote:
| Push your local officials to redesign your city and _actually_
| invest in local transportation, not just funnel it to
| contractor buddies.
|
| I agree there's a problem with cars in cities, but there's not
| a problem with cars elsewhere.
|
| Electrifying cars and trucks helps diversify how they are
| powered and keeps the logistics industries and tourist
| industries humming.
|
| It also helps public transportation, taxi services, etc.
|
| Cars in cities is a local problem, not a federal or even state
| one.
|
| What are those local solutions though? Trains for sure, use
| Japan as the model. Privatized but government controlled,
| cheap, clean, safe.
|
| Scooters? Those are an eye sore, they are laying everywhere,
| but are useful. Maybe at least bike racks for them?
| tammer wrote:
| This is correct & I'll add that reorganizing around sustainable
| ways of being is in fact an inevitably.
|
| And a result of this inevitably will be huge winners who invest
| in sustainable ways of being and huge losers tied to old ways
| of doing things.
| kube-system wrote:
| > Redesigning cities so that most people won't require a car to
| work and live is the real solution.
|
| That is simple to say, but what does that actually mean? I
| think some cities simply wouldn't exist if being navigable
| without car was a requirement. People will never move around
| Phoenix like they move around Amsterdam.
| nicoburns wrote:
| Why not? A lot of europea cities went car-centric (building
| highways through city centres etc) in the 20th century, and a
| lot of those changes have been rolled back. It won't happen
| immediately, but it could easily happen over say 50 years.
| The barriers are political not technical.
| [deleted]
| nradov wrote:
| Weather and terrain. Amsterdam is fortunate in being flat,
| and in having a fairly moderate climate where it's rarely
| extremely hot or cold. That situation doesn't obtain in
| most large North American cities. Sure it's _possible_ to
| ride a bike up a steep hill in Philadelphia in the middle
| of an ice storm or across Phoenix in a 40 degC heat wave,
| but it 's simply unrealistic to expect most people to do
| so. We ought to do more to improve bicycling infrastructure
| in most cities but that will never fix our fundamental
| transportation issues.
| kube-system wrote:
| There is a very significant difference between a dense city
| with a highway through the center of it, and a city that
| never had a dense center to begin with. Many places that
| people live in the US only exist because of cars. Without
| cars, they'd cease to exist.
|
| There are not many cities in Europe that are predated by
| the ubiquity of cars.
| acdha wrote:
| Maybe, but Phoenix is not every city in the country and it's
| possible to make a lot of improvements even if you're not
| perfect. For example, many cities have marginal finances
| because a large chunk of their resources have been dedicated
| to suburban commuters who contribute little other than
| pollution. Reclaiming public space for residents, removing
| density restrictions, and especially doing quick things like
| dedicated bus or bike lanes can make a huge improvement in
| desirability at modest cost.
| kube-system wrote:
| The second most populous state in the US is Texas. How
| would someone possibly redesign any major metro area in
| Texas to work without cars? Tear everything down and start
| over?
|
| It was all built to work around the automobile as primary
| transport. There's no patch fix.
| acdha wrote:
| You don't need to ban cars to reduce usage. The Texans I
| know would like more bus & bike infrastructure and even
| in Texas, most city dwellers make a ton of trips which
| are within bike range. As a simple example, think about
| how much the average family could do with the extra
| $10-12k a year they'd save by having one car instead of
| two. In a lot of places, people buy 2-3 ton SUVs so mom
| can drop the kids off a couple of miles away - a distance
| even a 4-5 year old could bike if it was safe.
| kube-system wrote:
| Of course there are people want it.
|
| The question is, how disadvantaged are public transit
| projects given the barriers imposed by the existing
| choices that have been made, and the marginal cost and
| benefit of that project compared to existing choices?
|
| Sprawl is difficult to cover with public transit, so you
| end up with a system that costs 2x as much, covers 1/2 as
| much area, and takes 2x as long to go anywhere. The most
| successful public transit systems in the world area all
| places where driving is car is not a viable alternative
| for many. In a world of 10 lane highways and free parking
| in a sea of strip malls, it's going to be hard to
| convince people to stand at a transit stop.
| spookie wrote:
| Yeah cities should be redesigned, but let's not forget everyone
| else...? Most of us are still living in rural areas, whereby
| public transportation wouldn't really solve much.
| stevenjgarner wrote:
| The looming copper shortage does not just coming for EV's. ICE
| vehicles use a substantial amount of copper (and other metals).
| "Starters, generators, and alternators contain an average of
| 2.8, 2.6, and 1.5 pounds of copper, respectively. Alternators
| also contain 3 to 4 pounds of aluminum. Most of the remaining
| metal is iron. About one-half of the starters have a solenoid
| that contains 0.5 pounds of copper." [0]. So that's at least
| 4.3 lbs (1.95 kg) of copper per ICE vehicle, not including uses
| in electronics etc.
|
| [0] https://www.911metallurgist.com/scrapped-starter-motors-
| alte...
| cmroanirgo wrote:
| Correct. The article mentions that EV use 2.5 times the
| amount of copper though. It also mentions how it's more than
| just what's in the car - that more copper infrastructure is
| required to power them. Lastly, it also mentions how using
| aluminium as a substitute just moves the goal posts, bc more
| bauxite need to be mined and smeltered.
| twoeyes2 wrote:
| Can aluminum take up the slack? I know long distance power cables
| are often aluminum. Even some of the larger gauge in-home wires.
| If copper prices rise too much, some demand will switch over to
| other conductors.
| salty_biscuits wrote:
| Sure, depending on the application you can just redesign to
| larger gauge aluminium. Aluminium has useful mechanical
| properties that trump the lower conductivity (such as power
| lines,where thermal cycles can make copper brittle). You could
| argue that there is a silver shortage in a similar way as the
| article has argued a copper shortage...
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