L1. Introduction to Resources

Welcome to BBE1002

Before we begin our conversation on biorenewable resources we need to provide some context for our discussion about "resources" and "resource consumption" as it is the underlying theme of this course. The following article discusses the challenges we face when dealing with natural resources and consumption of these resources. Please read this article and start thinking about what you consume, where it comes from, and where it goes when you are done with it.

Extraction Worries many. Many also use Copper.

Jim Bowyer. Star Tribune June 29, 2018

Consumption is the missing element in the discussion. Without mining, we might need to hit “pause” on other things we like.

In all of the discussion about copper mining in Minnesota, there is a remarkable lack of references to copper consumption within our state. At the same time that wind and solar energy expansion and electric vehicles are being enthusiastically promoted, the critical role of copper (and nickel) to these developments is never mentioned.

A typical wind turbine contains 4 to 8 tons of copper. Solar collectors contain even more copper per unit of energy generated. Even more significant is the copper used in the production of hybrid and electric vehicles. A fully electric automobile contains three to four times as much copper as a standard vehicle - a hybrid about twice as much. As the market for fossil-fuel-free vehicles expands, so does our need for copper.

In late 2017, the world's largest mining company, BHP Billiton, estimated that conversion of just 8 percent of the global auto fleet to electric vehicles would increase global copper use by more than 40 percent. The World Energy Council estimated an even greater impact on copper demand.

This expected increase comes on top of an already rapid rise in copper consumption. Overall copper consumption doubled between 1963 and 1996 - then doubled again over the past two decades.

Copper consumed here comes from about 40 mines located around the U.S., and from imports. A ranking of countries with respect to known copper reserves shows the U.S. among the top six. The quantity of America's known reserves is similar to those of Mexico and about four times those of Canada.

But despite significant domestic reserves, the U.S. annually imports about 30 percent to 35 percent of its copper needs from other countries, with Chile, Mexico and Canada all being major suppliers. This percentage is certain to grow without new or expanded domestic mining activity.

As noted frequently by mining opponents, copper mining poses environmental risks. That is why citizens groups all across the U.S. - and specifically in Arizona, Oregon, Washington, Alaska, Idaho, Montana and Michigan, in addition to Minnesota - are actively opposing proposed copper mining or mining expansion. To paraphrase Dr. Seuss: "Not here, not there, not anywhere."

But in none of these states, nor anywhere else in the U.S., is there citizen opposition to copper consumption, despite the fact that countries that supply copper to the U.S. all face significant environmental risks from copper procurement, with a long history of impacts that have ranged from significant to catastrophic.

Should Minnesotans conclude that the risks of copper mining are simply unacceptable, with the knowledge that environmental risks in all copper-supplying regions are high, then an effort should be mounted to reduce copper consumption.

A return to the Obama-era 20-year moratorium on copper mining in Minnesota, as advocated by some, should perhaps be accompanied by a 20-year moratorium on the development and adoption of renewable energy and electric vehicles, and by a concerted investment to find copper (and nickel) substitutes.

Society must come to grips with its aversion to copper procurement even as it celebrates the promise of new copper-dependent products and technologies designed to protect and enhance environmental quality. While taking reasonable steps to protect our domestic environment, we must find a way to shoulder our fair share of risks in obtaining the copper we need - or we must take steps to create a future in which less rather than more copper is needed.

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Jim Bowyer is an environmental consultant, an emeritus professor inthe Department of Bioproducts and Biosystems Engineering at the University of Minnesota, and the author of "The Irresponsible Pursuit of Paradise." (Link to Article Download Link to Article)

This article is in reference to two proposed mining operations in Northern Minnesota. The Northmet Project that is mining primarily copper and the Twin Metals Mine will be extracting copper, nickel, platinum, palladium, gold, and silver. The mining projects will produce much needed minerals and jobs, but at some risk to the environment.

Throughout the semester, you will see this same debate for all our natural resources. There is no consumption without extraction of natural resources.

Introduction

We used the term "natural resource" in the previous paragraph and it was used in the copper article. What exactly does that term mean? Natural resources are materials that exist naturally in the environment that humans use to fulfill our wants/needs (i.e. food, shelter, clothing). Examples of natural resources include coal, copper, petroleum, wood, water, wool, corn, etc.

There are two main categories of natural resources: non-renewable and renewable.

Non-renewable are often things that are mined or extracted from below the earth’s surface and include fossil fuels (e.g. coal, oil, natural gas), metallic minerals (e.g. aluminum, copper, iron), and non-metalic minerals (e.g. sand, clay, limestone). Non-renewable resources do not regenerate quickly enough to be used sustainably; for example, petroleum takes millions of years to form.

Renewable means that the resources can regenerate within a relatively short period of time, and can be sustainably managed to ensure they are available for future generations. Wool, corn, wood, water, wind, and sunlight are renewable resources. This video has a simple way of explaining the difference between non-renewable and renewable resources. You will have to use the YouTube link to view.

So what makes a resource bio-renewable? Biorenewable resources are a special subset of renewable resources that are derived from living things like plants, algae, animals, and microbes. Consider the examples of renewable resources given above. Wool, corn, and wood are biorenewable, while water, wind, and sunlight are not because they do not come from living organisms.

It’s important to remember that “man-made” things all originate from natural resources. Glass is from sand Links to an external site., cement (used to make concrete) is from limestone Links to an external site., steel is from iron ore Links to an external site., plastic is from petroleum Links to an external site.. Your computer is "man-made" but 100% of those parts come from natural resources. All of the plastic to form the shell of the computer, the keyboard, and the screen, is from petroleum. All of the electronics are from the metallic minerals and most of the energy used to produce the computer is from fossil fuels - also natural resources. Bottom line: all things have to come from somewhere. And this "somewhere" is natural resources.

Where do these resources come from?

Natural resources are not evenly distributed across the planet. Water is one of the most unevenly distributed resources with many areas of the world (i.e. northern Africa, India) that face significant water scarcity issues. As we will see water availability has a strong correlation to where our bioresources are located. But remember, water is not just for drinking and growing plants. We need water for the extraction and processing of all natural resources.

Figure 1. Global distribution of freshwater. (Image source Links to an external site.)

Fossil fuels, another natural resource are also unevenly distributed. Figure 2 shows the distribution of petroleum reserves. Venezuela has the biggest dot meaning that it has the largest source of petroleum reserves in the world. Some regions have no petroleum reserves. It is all about how these fossil fuels were formed.

Petroleum Reserves Bubble

The same goes for non-renewable metallic mineral resources. South Africa alone contains a whopping 88% of all of the platinum/rhodium in the world while most other countries don't have any. What does that big blue box in Canada represent? You may need to click and enlarge the graph.

by NigelHawtin Links to an external site.. From Visually Links to an external site..

Figure 2. Global distribution of minerals. (Image source Links to an external site.) Click on the link to see a larger, easier-to-read version of the infographic.

This unequal distribution of materials means that countries are constantly importing and exporting resources in order to meet their populations' needs.

In the U.S., a massive amount of the resources we consume come from other countries. We import 40-50% of the metals that we use, and 100% of many metals that are considered high-impact - meaning materials that are essential to our economy. Table 1 is a short list of some of the resources, what we use them for, and the percent we need to import to meet our needs. A more complete list is in the IPP (Irresponsible Pursuit of Paradise) textbook pg 121. There are a few materials, like sand or iron ore, that we export to other countries.

Table 1. 2017 U.S. imports of some select minerals. (These are updates to the table on pg 121 of IPP using the Minerals Commodity Summary 2018.)

Material	% imported	Foreign Sources (2013-2016)	What we use it for
Graphite	100	China, Mexico, Canada, Brazile	Pencils, lubricants, lithium-ion batteries
Arsenic	100	Morocco, China, Belgium	Mixed with lead in car batteries, poultry feed additive
Manganese	100	South Africa, Gabon, Australia, Georgia	Steel, drink cans, catalyst, rubber additive
Potash	92	Canada, Russia, Israel, Chile	Fertilizer, aluminum recycling, oil-well drilling fluid, ice melting
Platinum	68	South Africa, Germany, United Kingdom, Russia	Catalytic converters for cars, jewelry, computer hard drive
Aluminum	61	Canada, Russia, United Arab Emirates, China	Cans, foils, utensils, window frames, beer kegs and airplane parts
Copper	33	Chile, Canada, Mexico	Electrical generators, motors, wiring
Petroleum*	27	Canada, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Venezuela, Iraq	Fuel, heating and electricity, asphalt, plastics, chemicals
Softwood Lumber*	25	Canada	Building materials, furniture
Cement	Less than 25		Construction of roads, buildings, dams, etc. (binder in concrete)
Petroleum	20	Canada, Saudi Arabia. Mexico	All sorts of things.
Sand and Gravel	Export
Iron Ore	Export

**Petroleum Data from US DOE, EIA 2016. Softwood lumber data from RISI, 2015

Does the U.S. import so many resources because we don't have enough of them? To answer that question, let's go back to our copper example that we started with. The U.S. contains about 7-10% of the global reserves of copper (about 45 million tons). This is way more than enough to meet our needs so we could domestically mine all of the copper we use. But do we? No. We import about 33% of of the copper we consume. Why?

First of all, mining is a business. Copper is mined heavily in places like Chile (see Figure 2) because that is where copper extraction is most economical. Economics of resource extraction is complex and a function of many factors including the accessibility of the material, the purity of the material (e.g. the % of copper in the rock formation), labor costs, transportation costs, etc.

Another reason that we import so many resources is because the U.S. is known for having stricter environmental regulations than many other places in the world. Like the copper article above, we in the US see the value of protecting our natural resources. By importing copper and other resources, we can enjoy the benefits of consumption without the local environmental impacts. In other words, we can have our copper-filled electric cars and our mine-free wilderness, too. We will learn more about this concept in our next few lessons.

You can see that resource use is a complicated subject. Stuff has to come from somewhere, and extracting that stuff has consequences. As we go through the semester, it is important to remember that environmental impacts can be shifted or lessened, but they cannot be avoided.

In the next few lectures, we will be digging deeper into consumption trends and impacts.

Read through the Syllabus if you want to know how the course is structured and what you will be graded on. The first quiz will ask you syllabus questions just to make sure we are all on the same page.

Please read Chapter 1 (pgs 9-18) of Irresponsible Pursuit of Paradise (IPP). If you don't have a textbook yet - here is a pdf Download here is a pdf

of those pages.

Instructions for completing this lesson:

Clicking the "NEXT" at the bottom right of your screen will take you to the lesson 1 quiz. If you "right click" on the "NEXT" button the quiz will open in a new window so you can see the lesson page and the quiz at the same time. Quizzes are typically 10 questions and we give you 3 hours. After the quiz, there will be another "NEXT" button that will take you to a short reflection question.