Pearls and Irritations

The green transition needs copper but how do poor copper-rich countries reap the rewards? The hydrogen-energy balloon is floating away. Underground tanks help to manage flash floods. Big cats become the prey. 

Zambia’s copper. Who will benefit?

An article in the New York Times was headed:

‘A.I. Needs Copper. It Just Helped to Find Millions of Tons of It.

The deposit, in Zambia, could make billions for Silicon Valley, provide minerals for the energy transition and help the United States in its rivalry with China.’

The nausea was overwhelming but my duty to P&I’s editors and readers obliged me to read on.

The basis of the headline is that KoBold Metals, a company based in California, used artificial intelligence and subatomic particles called muons to help them locate a massive vein of copper a mile underground in Zambia. The find is in Zambia’s Copperbelt Province so it’s hardly a surprise that it was there. Having the technology to locate it one mile deep, that is new.

KoBold is now investing US$2.3 billion to develop a mine and the US government is part-financing a new railway to export the copper. When the mine is in full swing in about ten years, it is expected to produce at least 300,000 tons of copper per year, enough for 50 million EV batteries. The billions of dollars generated will flow for decades.

Copper is one of the minerals that is essential for many of the ‘clean’ technologies needed for both the energy transition and the expanding world of IT (including artificial intelligence). The article claims that until 2050 the world will need up to six new copper mines of similar size to open every year.

In terms of finding the raw materials that we need for an environmentally sustainable world, of using whizz-bang new technology and of generating huge profits for someone, this is a great story (although I’m not as concerned as the NYT about China).

I am, however, worried about Zambia. In Africa, colonialism has largely been replaced by economic neo-colonialism and many countries have not benefitted as much as they should have from the extraction and export of their natural resources by rich nations. How likely is it that KoBold will be a model miner, employer and taxpayer, and ensure that Zambia and its people benefit?

In the second half of the article these issues are discussed. Despite Zambia’s rich mineral deposits that have enabled many within and outside the country to get rich, it remains one of the least developed and most indebted countries in the world. Zambia exemplifies the ‘resource (or as I prefer to call it ‘greed’) curse’.

Zambia’s state mining company owns 20% of the KoBold venture (and wants more) but the majority of investors are from Silicon Valley and it’s doubtful how much local benefit (jobs, income, social services, etc.) will flow to ordinary Zambians, a view shared by Grieve Chelwa, a Zambian economist:

“The value of copper that has left Zambia is in the hundreds of billions of dollars. Hold that figure in your mind, and then look around yourself in Zambia. The link between resource and benefit is severed.”

Any confidence that the Zambian people might benefit is not helped by some of the quotes from KoBold staff:

“We are the American beachhead in Africa. And that’s how the government sees it.”

“For a find this valuable, there’s nothing on the surface we can’t move.”

The scramble for Africa continues.

Hydrogen’s optimism starts to evaporate

Not so long ago, green hydrogen was being hailed as the super-energy source of the future and Australia was being touted as one of the world’s great suppliers – ‘shipping sunshine’, Chief Scientist, Alan Finkel, cutely called it. We just needed to invest big and not replicate previous missed opportunities with Australian technology developments, solar panels and devices to treat sleep apnoea for example.

Three of hydrogen’s previously big fans, Finkel, Andrew Forrest and Tim Buckley, have reassessed the situation, however, and are not as keen as they were. The optimism that hydrogen’s flexibility would enable it to fill lots of energy roles in the green economy has evaporated as better and cheaper options have become available for many of them. For example, Buckley has recently said that ‘The hydrogen car is dead’.

In addition, handling hydrogen has lots of technical problems – as my parents would confirm following the explosion created by a teenage aspiring chemist in their garage. Peter Newman, professor of sustainability, sums it up nicely: ‘It escapes. It’s so hard to store and transport. It corrodes everything. It loves oxygen, it’s always trying to turn itself into water. [To convert it into a liquid], you have to cool it to minus 250 degrees. It’s just … incredibly difficult engineering’. And it’s expensive.

That’s not to say that hydrogen has no role in Australia’s future energy mix, but it will likely be for a few specific uses within Australia rather than for export.

Big cats’ popularity may be their downfall

The size, power, speed and beauty of big cats – broadly defined as tigers, lions, leopards, snow leopards, clouded leopards, jaguars, cheetahs and pumas – hold people’s imagination like few other animals. However, while many people simply want to watch, admire or photograph big cats, others prefer to shoot them, display all or part of them as a sign of power, wealth and status, or use bits of them for their alleged health- and vitality-giving properties.

The outcome is that while some big cats (e.g. pumas) seem to be doing OK in the wild, others, particularly tigers and leopards, are ‘Critically Endangered’ as a result of trophy hunting, poaching and habitat loss. Legal and illegal captive breeding programs also supply the demand for big cat body parts (almost every bit is valued by someone somewhere for something) and for ‘canned’ hunting, slightly more challenging than shooting fish in a barrel but much the same idea. Cheetahs are also increasingly popular as luxury pets, particularly in the Gulf States.

That all said, the major reason reported by exporters and importers for trade in big cat specimens between 2010 and 2019 was for scientific purposes.

Big cats are important not only because they have appeal to human emotions. They also play crucial roles in the ecosystems they occupy; ecosystems that are important to humans as sources of fresh water and for the mitigation of climate change, for example. The cats play ‘keystone’ roles in maintaining the structure and function of their ecosystems; their populations are indicators of the health of the whole ecosystem; and they act as focal points for conservation action that benefits many other species in the ecosystem.

Recommendations by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) to reduce the threats to big cats include:

• Strengthen the implementation and enforcement of the CITES Convention, particularly regarding illegal trade and corruption.
• Strengthen the regulation and enforcement of captive big cat breeding facilities to prevent and detect illegal trade.
• Tackle the underlying drivers of the illegal trade in big cats in both source and destination countries.
• Improve the identification of big cat specimens in trade.
• Strengthen international collaboration to address the illegal trade.

Avoiding flash floods

Historically, flooding has been caused mostly by overflowing rivers. Climate change-driven flash flooding occurs when very heavy rainfall in a small area overwhelms the capacity of the drainage system. It is more erratic and harder to predict than overflowing rivers. The global financial losses from flash flooding have increased markedly recently, particularly the insured losses which for 2021-2023 were over ten times greater than during 2018-2020 – no wonder premiums have been rising.

Orchard Road’s luxury retail area in Singapore unites a natural depression with lots of hard surfaces. The result was three flash floods in 2010 and 2011, with more of the problematic downpours predicted.

Singapore has spent around Aus$2.3 billion on drainage infrastructure in the last decade. To protect Orchard Road, this includes Aus$260 million on a rainwater storage tank the size of 15 Olympic-sized swimming pools 30 metres beneath the Botanic Gardens. Completed in 2018, the tank hasn’t yet been needed. The 3-minute video in the link is worth watching.

Other wealthy cities (Tokyo and Hong Kong, for example) have undertaken similar work but poorer countries, although exposed to similar risks, don’t have the resources for similarly expensive but equally necessary climate change adaptation projects.

Big cat ID

How well do you know your big cats and their current status of vulnerability in the wild? Tiger numbers are decreasing and they are considered Endangered. What about jaguars, lions, cheetahs and the various types of leopards?

 

Article updated 13 August 2024.  Editors’ note:  The author has corrected sections of this article which conflated Zambia’s history with that of Zaire.