Broken supply chains, geopolitical tensions, war, inflation, rising energy costs, food crisis, droughts, famine, depleting mines ... Welcome to the 2020s!
And as populations continue to grow we’re finding less of the things we need most. Take copper, for example, the ONE metal critical in the adoption towards electrification. Governments want to phase out fossil fuels and replace them with renewables which are NOT energy-dense.
Wind farms have to be where the wind blows, typically at altitude. Solar farms need to be where the sun shines. Both are typically located way out in the country, because they need a lot of empty land.
To bring all this renewable electricity from way out in the country to the cities — where over 90% of Australians live — we’ll need 10,000 kilometres of new transmission cables. That’s more than the entire width of Australia, coast to coast, twice over. And that's just Australia.
Sweden just decided to replace 16,000 kilometres of cabling to enhance their national electrical grid. In India, this number goes up to 27,000 kilometres. Meanwhile, in the United States, they’re constructing over 75,000 kilometres of new cables to meet the demands of electrification.
There's just one big problem: these new cables don't exist yet. To make them requires copper, lots and lots of copper, because copper is the only option available in rebuilding all those ageing global power grids.
That's why you should stay focused on copper.
