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Copper driving the green energy revolution
COPPER
DRIVING THE GREEN ENERGY REVOLUTION
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Already an indispensable material in our everyday life, copper will soon have an even bigger role as a vital ingredient in the Green Energy Revolution. But what is the Green Energy Revolution and what are the green metals that are driving this change to cleaner energies?
What is climate change and is it different to global warming?
While climate change and global warming may seem like the same thing, they are different.
Global warming refers only to the Earth’s rising surface temperature, caused mainly by greenhouse gases. Greenhouse gases are gases in the Earth’s atmosphere that trap heat.
Climate change, on the other hand, includes warming and the effects of warming like melting glaciers, heavier rainstorms, or more frequent drought.
What is the Green Energy Revolution?
The negative impact caused by the speed of climate change and global warming has forced a global shift to cleaner, greener and more environmentally friendly energy sources.
Across the world governments and companies are working to cut global emissions caused by fossil fuels such as oil, gas, and coal. These traditional forms of energy are being phased out and replaced with solar, wind, and hydro energy, or green energy.
Green energy is any energy type that is generated from natural resources, such as sunlight, wind or water. The key with these energy resources is that they don’t harm the environment through factors such as releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
This shift to cleaner energies is called the Green Energy Revolution.
Why should we care?
Global warming (the rising of the Earth’s temperatures) is one symptom of the much larger problem of human-caused climate change. Human-caused because the changes witnessed over the past decade have not been natural. Human activities like generating electricity, driving cars and cutting down the trees in forests are some of the reasons causing changes to weather systems.
According to temperature analysis led by scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, the average global temperature on Earth has increased by at least 1.1° Celsius since 1880. While that may not seem like a lot, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that Earth is warmer than it has been for 125,000 years and it’s getting worse. Modern society’s continued dependence on fossil fuels such as oil, gas, and coal are warming the world at a dangerous pace.
As temperatures rise in the future extreme weather events like droughts and flooding will become increasingly severe. They say that events that may have occurred once every 50 years in centuries past will probably occur every 3–4 years if Earth reaches 2 °C above pre-industrial temperatures.
What are green metals and how can they help fight climate change?
To stop the Earth’s temperatures from rising further, the world must phase out and replace oil, gas, and coal with solar, wind, and hydro energy. This shift from “dirty” energy to cleaner energies is called the Green Energy Revolution and this is where the metals that Orion will produce come into play. Copper and zinc are two of only a handful of metals that are used in these technologies. Known as green metals, these metals play an important role in greening the future.
Renewable energy systems like solar, wind and hydro, consume about five times more copper than other power generation systems. This makes copper essential for any successful transition to fossil fuel alternatives. Also, about three times more copper is used for electric vehicles in comparison to petrol vehicles.
