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Copper is essential for all modern infrastructure, energy generation and transmission, transportation, communications, industrial machinery and electrical appliances.
As a pure-play copper producer with a portfolio of low cost, long life assets and a track record of delivering world class copper projects, KAZ Minerals is well positioned to take advantage of continued growth in the demand for copper.
Copper is needed to support the transition to a low carbon future as it is essential to renewable power generation.
‘‘Renewable power generation sources are considerably more copper intensive compared to their conventional counterparts. An offshore wind power plant can consume around five times more copper compared to a coal-based plant. Copper is used in cables within the turbine towers, in array cabling (particularly deep water offshore) as well as in export cables to bring power back to shore.’’
Electric vehicles and their associated infrastructure require significantly more copper than conventional internal combustion engine vehicles.
‘‘A scaling-up of electric vehicles and renewable power generation (wind and solar) will require considerable investments in transmission and infrastructure as grids are upgraded to handle variable sources of energy and support electric vehicle charging requirements. There would be a substantial upside to copper demand.’’
Almost 200 countries signed a climate pact at the global COP 26 summit in November 2021. Pledges were announced to transition away from unabated coal power generation and fossil fuelled vehicles over the next two decades.
‘‘Renewable power will be responsible for an increasing share of total energy demand, as electrification becomes a pathway to decarbonisation.’’
‘‘Decarbonisation commitments are still a major upside risk to our base case copper demand forecasts. Besides electrical vehicles, renewables are also set to support copper consumption.’’