Ryan Dezember

So there's a problem brewing in copper where we won't have enough.

We need, globally, a tremendous amount of copper.

And that's because a lot of different things are happening.

We have this move to improve the power grid, expand it, make it able to handle electric vehicles.

You have countries in the developing world where people are getting air conditioning and refrigerators and appliances for the first time.

And then you have this AI boom.

These data centers are...

Basically giant buildings filled with copper.

Every wire circuit board component has copper in it to move the electrons around.

So they have a tremendous appetite for copper.

Well, that's making things like wire and pipe more expensive to bring into the country.

So there's really been a focus on how do we produce more of the stuff within the U.S.

The problem is a lot of that material needs to be sent abroad to be processed into useful forms that manufacturers can use and then brought back.

So there's a lot of effort into figuring out ways to produce ready-to-use copper in the U.S.,

It's a relatively small mine, but it's important because a company called Rio Tinto, one of the world's largest miners, is basically running an industrial-scale trial of a new technology they've developed where they add bacteria to the acid that's normally poured over mines.

certain copper ores to extract the copper in solution.

The resulting copper cathodes are like pure copper.

They're ready to go.

They can sell them right to automakers or tech firms for their data centers or companies that are making plumbing parts and pipe.

So if Rio's successful, it's the sort of technology that they can take to a lot of other mines.