Swapping aluminum for copper will maintain China’s resources, group says
China depends on overseas imports for 60% of its aluminum resources as opposed to 70% of its copper resources.
Canada’s largest diversified miner, Teck Resources, (TSX: TECK.A; TECK.B, NYSE: TECK) will power its Quebrada Blanca phase 2 (QB2) copper project in Chile with 100% renewable energy sources from 2025 onwards.
AES Corp. (NYSE: AES) has agreed to supply the Canadian miner with 1,069 gigawatt hours per year of energy from renewable sources for 17 years. The clean power purchase agreement with a local AES subsidiary builds on the February 2020 QB2 renewable energy announcement to fully power QB2 with clean energy starting in 2025.
AES Andes uses its growing renewable portfolio that includes wind, solar, hydro and battery plants to supply clean energy to QB2. With its “Greentegra” strategy, AES Andes has already signed more than 6,500 GWh per year of renewable agreements with mining companies in Chile.
Teck estimates the clean energy contract will mitigate about 1.6 million tonnes of annual greenhouse gas emissions, equivalent to removing over 340,000 combustion engine passenger vehicles from the road. That is the equivalent of more than the annual emissions of all the cars in Vancouver, where Teck is headquartered, or two and a half times the number of vehicles in the Tarapacá Region of Chile, where QB2 is located.
The terms of the agreement are confidential.
However, it will enable Teck to achieve its goal of net-zero scope two emissions (emissions associated with purchasing power) by 2025, making it one of the first companies in the mining industry to achieve this target. It also contributes to Teck’s 2030 goal of reducing the carbon intensity of operations by 33% and ultimately becoming a net-zero operator by 2050. Teck previously announced switching to 100% renewable power for its Carmen de Andacollo operation in Chile.
In October, Teck announced another budget blowout for the QB2 project, this time adding a minimum of $500 million to bring the total capital cost to between $7.4 billion and $7.8 billion, up from a July 2022 guidance of $6.9 billion to $7 billion, and an earlier estimate of $4.7 billion.
QB2, a critical growth project for Teck, has faced several delays. Initially, it was expected to begin production in 2021. The current timeline points to first copper by the end of the year, but the company has said the start could be delayed into January 2023 if construction delays persist.
Teck’s most traded equity, TECK.B, is up more than 34% over the past 12 months at C$45.63, having tested respective highs and lows of C$57.50 and C$32.05. The company has a market cap of C$23.4 billion ($17.5bn).
Comments
Joathan Brown
I respectfully urge all that are investing or planning to invest in the hydrogen economy to stop and think of the potential consequence of sourcing hydrogen from water. Water is a life-essential natural resource whose use as a source of hydrogen fuel must be carefully contemplated. With water shortages occurring around the world, one must consider the demands that already exist on this critical resource. Could we be trading the CO2 problem for an even bigger problem? There are other sources for hydrogen that may not be as simple to develop commercially but are certainly more sustainable in the long-term. These sources generally have greater amounts of hydrogen available to harvest than water and one in particularly harnesses solar energy and is truly renewable.
My concern regarding the use of water to produce hydrogen is the fact that no one is talking about reusing the water vapor produced from the fuel cells that use the hydrogen to produce electrical energy. Simply dumping it in the atmosphere is not acceptable as water vapor is the largest segment of greenhouse gases that are known to contribute to global warming. Please consider the capture and reuse of this hot water vapor as an important step in the responsible development and use of hydrogen as a fuel. This is especially true of light and commercial vehicles.
Is water, a life-essential natural resources something we should use to produce hydrogen fuel to power our EVs, then discard it? Where did that water come from, and where will end up when its discarded. How can it find its way back to its source point? How will it be reused? These are some of the questions that need to be answered if we want a sustainable hydrogen fueled world.