Copper Thieves Black Out LA: This Week in Power Metal

How the raw materials we need for renewable energy and digital technology are hurting people and the planet—and how we can do better.

Copper Thieves Black Out LA

Darkness is descending on Los Angeles, and not just in the usual metaphorical sense. A record number of streetlights are out of commission, knocked out by armies of copper thieves who have stripped them for their wiring, reports Christina Chkarboul of Crosstown. The price of the red metal is surging, driven in large part by the huge demand from the electric vehicle and renewable energy industries. That in turn is turbo-charging a worldwide wave of copper theft, as astute readers like yourself will recall.

In Los Angeles, copper bandits are ripping out so much wire that calls for streetlight repairs have doubled since 2020. The city spent more than $20 million on repairs in the past year alone. There were a record 6,842 copper theft incidents that year, inspiring the LAPD to set up a copper theft task force. They might want to share notes with the cops in St. Paul, Minnesota, who spent weeks tracking a gang of wire thieves they recently arrested. Or with folks in Calgary, Alberta, where copper thieves recently knocked out internet and phone service to thousands of residents. It’d be nice to get a handle on the problem before things get as bad as South Africa, where officials in Johannesburg are begging the army for help fighting cable criminals.

And how’s this for irony? In Japan, thefts of copper cables from solar power facilities have more than tripled in the past year, topping 5,300 cases. That is to say: Renewable energy growth is generating demand for copper; that demand is generating copper theft; and copper theft is shutting down renewable energy producers. I guess that’s one version of the circular economy?

---

Bombs at EV Plant

Someone planted incendiary devices earlier this week at the construction site for a massive new electric vehicle battery factory in Quebec, The Canadian Press reports—the latest in a series of actions targeting the facility. Placed under the tires of vehicles on the site, the devices consisted of several bottles filled with flammable liquid and equipped with an ignition system—Molotov cocktails, basically—that apparently failed to work, according to a company official.

Who would try to sabotage a project aimed at putting more electric vehicles on the road? Most likely, misguided environmental activists. Ever since the $7 billion facility was announced back in September, green groups as well as the local Mohawk community have opposed it, largely because clearing its 170-hectare site near Montreal will involve wiping out trees and wetlands. There have been protest marches, a court challenge, and in February, someone laid spiked mats at the site and damaged a company vehicle. Shortly before that, activists drove nails into about 100 trees on the site, a vintage tactic that makes it dangerous to cut down the “spiked” trees. According to the CP, “An anonymous group claimed responsibility on an anarchist website, saying the motive for their ‘sabotage’ was to protest the megaproject, which they said would destroy woods and wetlands and perpetuate car culture.”

Now, I love woods and wetlands as much as the next maple-syrup-blooded Canadian, and I also want to end the dominance of the automobile. We can, and must, move toward a world with far fewer cars. But not everyone can get around on bikes or public transit, and hauling home a new refrigerator on either is mighty difficult. We’re always going to need some cars and trucks. We need those cars and trucks to be electric, not fossil-fuel powered. Which means we need to build EV battery plants somewhere. Wherever we do that, it’s going to cause some damage to the environment and whoever lives nearby. The challenge is finding places and methods to keep that damage as minimal as possible. But we can’t firebomb our way out of those hard decisions.

---

How We Can Do Better: Running California on Batteries

If you need more convincing on how batteries help combat combat climate change, check out what’s happening California. On one recent evening, report Brad Plumer and Nadja Popovich in The New York Times, batteries supplied more than one-fifth of all electricity being used throughout the state. That’s an amount comparable to the combined output of several large nuclear reactors. It’s an astonishing increase from just three years ago, when batteries’ contribution to the power grid was close to zero.

Much of the juice stored in those batteries was harvested from the sun. California has built more solar power plants than any other state, and since 2020, it has also installed more giant batteries than anywhere outside of China. Solar power will never be enough on its own, because, y’know, nighttime.  The sun doesn’t always shine. Nor does the wind always blow. You need a way to stockpile the renewable energy generated when there’s wind and sun for use when there isn’t. In short, for renewables to make a difference at the grid level, you need batteries. Lots, and big ones.

The excellent news is that those batteries are proliferating like bunnies, and not just in California. The US already has enough battery power to supply millions of homes. “Over the past three years, battery storage capacity on the nation’s grids has grown tenfold…this year, it is expected to nearly double again, with the biggest growth in Texas, California and Arizona,” says the Times.

Yes, manufacturing all those batteries is going to consume ungodly quantities of lithium, cobalt, nickel and other metals, most of them gouged out of the Earth. That’s a reason to fight for better mining practices, more recycling and less consumption—not to fight against battery factories.

---

Pic of the Week