BHP Billiton Ltd, the world’s biggest miner, is hot for electric vehicles.
The Melbourne-based resources giant, which mines metals and coal used for both steelmaking and fueling power plants, is increasingly optimistic that there will be a surge in demand for some of its products as consumers opt for electric vehicles (EVs) and other renewable energy technologies.
“As you see more renewables and EVs, we also will see an impact on copper demand,” BHP vice president for sustainability and climate change Fiona Wild said yesterday at a conference in Shanghai hosted by Bloomberg New Energy Finance. “EVs at the moment have about 80kg of copper in them. As they become more efficient, you see a greater amount of copper in those vehicles, so there’s always upside for copper.”
One million EVs were sold between 2010 and last year, largely driven by regulatory mandates in important auto markets including the US, China and Europe, the research firm said last month.
By 2020, about 2.2 million EVs will be sold globally, up from 460,000 expected this year, according to the research company.
Electric vehicles require a lot more copper wiring than standard internal combustion engines.
Copper is the poorest performer this year on the London Metal Exchange, with a gain of just 4 percent, compared with more than 54 percent for zinc. The metal is suffering amid a surge in supply this year, as demand slows in China.
Copper accounts for 27 percent of BHP’s commodity sales, second after iron ore at 34 percent, according to the company Web site.
“As a powerful offset to substitution, copper is superbly placed to benefit from expanded end use demand on the back of observed trends in technology, which we expect will become material from around the middle 2020s,” BHP vice president for marketing minerals Vicky Binns wrote on BHP’s Web site on Monday.
Copper usage in electric cars will contribute to China’s demand growing at about 3.3 percent a year up to 2020, according to the government’s five-year plan for the metals industry published by the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology last month.
Demand for metals in lightweight transportation and “new energy” vehicles is part of a “new normal” for metals as the economy slows, the ministry said.
China became the world’s biggest copper consumer amid a construction boom and buildup of its electricity grid.
BHP has invested several hundreds of millions of dollars since 2007 in the research and development of technologies to reduce greenhouse gases, including carbon capture, it said in a report last year.
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