At a laboratory in Newark, New Jersey, a gray liquid swirls vigorously inside a reactor the size of a small watermelon. Here, scientists with the mining technology startup Still Bright are using a rare metal, vanadium, to extract a common one, copper, from ores that are too difficult or costly for the mining industry to process today. If the promising results Still Bright is seeing in beakers and bottles can be replicated at much larger scales, it could unlock vast copper resources for the energy transition. Still Bright isn’t the only company seeking to revolutionize copper production. A handful of startups with similar goals have announced partnerships with major mining firms and scooped up tens of millions of dollars in investment. These companies claim their technology can help meet humanity’s surging appetite for the metal while driving down the industry’s environmental footprint.
“We’re facing unprecedented demand for copper, and that’s really tied to the electrification of everything,” Still Bright chief of staff Carter Schmitt told Grist. The world cannot reach its climate goals without copper, which plays a central role in the technologies needed to decarbonize. Copper wiring is at the core of the world’s electricity networks, which will have to expand enormously to bring more renewable energy online. Wind turbines, solar panels, electric vehicles, and lithium-ion batteries all rely on the mineral, too. As the market for these technologies grows, the clean energy sector’s demand for copper is expected to nearly triple by 2040.
However, copper miners are exhausting their best-quality reserves. The concentration of copper contained in ores has declined steadily over the past 20 years. As easy-to-process minerals near the surface give way to more challenging ones deeper down, the current standard procedure for extracting the metal results in significant pollution. About 80 percent of the copper mined today comes from unweathered rocks known as primary copper sulfide ores. The process of concentrating and smelting copper produces a toxic mineral slurry called tailings and a cocktail of air pollutants including lead and arsenic. The San Carlos Apache Tribe in Arizona has borne the brunt of that pollution, with two of America’s three copper smelters located near their reservation boundaries.
Despite the challenges, the outlook for copper extraction is evolving. Startups like Ceibo and Jetti Resources are proposing new approaches to recover copper from low-grade sulfide ores. Ceibo, founded in 2021, is leveraging a heap leaching process that has traditionally been used for weathered rocks. This method involves crushing the rock, piling it up, and spraying it with acid to liberate the valuable metal. While heap leaching has its limitations, it produces significantly less pollution and carbon emissions than traditional smelting. Jetti Resources has already begun applying its proprietary catalyst at commercial sites, claiming to have doubled production at the Pinto Valley mine in Arizona.
Holly Bridgwater, director of Australian mining innovation company Unearthed Solutions, believes the technologies offered by these startups hold promise, despite the lack of public test results. “Otherwise, all these mining companies wouldn’t be working with them,” she noted. The fact that major players in the industry are investing in these new technologies signals a shift in how copper production might evolve.
As the world grapples with an insatiable demand for copper, these innovations could change the game. They offer a glimmer of hope for a cleaner, more efficient extraction process that could meet the needs of a rapidly electrifying world while addressing the environmental concerns that have long plagued the mining sector. If successful, these approaches could not only unlock vast supplies of copper but could also redefine the industry’s relationship with the communities and ecosystems it impacts. The stakes are high, and the future of copper production hangs in the balance.
