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Phil Hawkins's avatar

Besides windmills and solar panels, we are already using much more copper than we used to. In the 1970s, the wiring harness for a car weighed about 40-60 pounds. Now with onboard computers, power windows, power locks, powered sliding doors on minivans, heated seats, sensors for all kinds of things--tire pressure, pollution control, air bags, and more, a car's wiring harness is over 200 pounds of copper. And that's for a gas-powered car!

I'm retired now, but in my past I worked as a residential electrician at times. It takes a lot more copper to wire a modern 3000 sf house than it used to take for a 1000 sf house 60 years ago. It isn't just the longer distances from the panel to point of use (although that can be a problem--if the distance gets too great, you have to use heavier wire to prevent voltage drop). Where a house had maybe a dozen electrical circuits 50 years ago, with a panel rated for 100 amps, now a panel may be made for 200 amps and up to 40 circuits.

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Stephen McIntyre's avatar

when I was young, I worked for a very large copper mining, smelting and refining company in Canada for many years. And while I'm not up to date on copper markets, I've got a lot of experience. Copper and other base metal prices remained stagnant for decades - not just in inflation-adjusted currency, but in absolute dollars. Copper hit $1/pound in 1973 and is $3.60 currently. Compare that to house prices or other commodities. If miners could be sure of long-term prices of (say) $ 5 per pound, I expect that lots of copper could be developed. One of the concepts in the actual business was the concept of a "resource triangle" - i.e. at lower cut-off grades, the amount of reserves increased. At higher prices, lower cut-off grades make more and more reserves economic. In past 30 years, China developed massive copper smelting and refining capacity - from virtually nothing to more than the entire west combined. I don't think that most people in US or Canada fully appreciate the degree to which China is a much larger economy in these heavy industries.

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