Running on Empty | What copper teaches us about the limits of ‘clean energy’

The foundation of this vision is far less stable than we’ve been led to believe. The bottleneck isn’t enthusiasm, or policy, or even technology, but the physical world itself.

As just one of many examples of the physical limits we face, a recent article, “Running on Empty: Copper,” lays out a stark truth: copper, the metal at the core of electrification, is hitting hard physical and geological limits. It is a story about overshoot: humanity demanding more from the Earth than the Earth can provide.

Copper is the metal of electrification; the circulatory system of the entire electrical world. Every EV, every electric ferry, every charging station, every heat pump, every watt of new local generation, every computer in a data center and every cat video generated by AI requires copper. Solar panels use copper. Wind turbines use copper. Data centers, transmission and distribution wires, transformers, inverters, motors—copper, copper, copper.

Copper is not unique in this regard. Lithium, cobalt, nickel, rare earth metals, and even sand all show similar trends. But copper matters because it exposes the fundamental contradiction in the story we tell about “clean energy.”

The contradiction is this: We cannot mine our way out of a crisis caused by mining.

The idea that solar panels and wind turbines and tidal machines will permanently free us from destructive extraction overlooks the vast and intensifying extraction required to build them in the first place. It treats the initial costs as temporary, the damage as incidental, and the scale as manageable. But the scale is not manageable. The electrification plans of wealthy nations and our own utility require quantities of copper and other minerals that the Earth simply cannot supply at the pace demanded.

This has direct implications for our own community. When our local utility sketches plans for local generation, microgrids, EV and ferry charging expansion, and widespread adoption of electric heating systems, those plans implicitly assume that the copper and other materials needed will be available, affordable, and environmentally tolerable. They assume that the supply chains powering this build-out are stable and that the deeper ecological costs are minimal or at least acceptable. OPALCO claims this build-out is necessary or we’ll face blackouts; it seems more likely that as the supply of finite materials drops, and the ecological and financial costs skyrocket, we’ll face blackouts no matter what we build.

The truth is that “clean energy” is only clean at the point of use. The further you trace upstream, to the mine, the pit, the acid heap, the diesel trucks, the tailings ponds, the more the fantasy of clean energy dissolves.

To call these technologies “renewable,” as OPALCO always does, is misleading. The electricity may renew itself as sunlight or tides, but the machines that harvest that energy do not. They are made of finite materials, extracted at tremendous cost to ecosystems, communities, and the climate. The land scarred by mines is not renewable. The groundwater polluted by tailings is not renewable. The species pushed to extinction by habitat destruction are not renewable.

And the copper itself is not renewable.

This is not, as some argue, a reason to cling to fossil fuels. Rather, it is a call to recognize that we cannot maintain our current levels of consumption and energy use by any means whatsoever; not fossil fuels, not solar, not wind, not tidal, not nuclear. The problem is not that we picked the wrong energy source. The problem is that we have built an entire civilization on the belief that growth is infinite, that energy can be limitless, and that the biophysical constraints of the Earth do not apply to us.

This brings us back to overshoot, and to the uncomfortable reality that “green growth” is still growth. When a utility encourages every homeowner to buy an EV, install a heat pump, add new electric appliances, charge bikes and tools and cars, and generally shift more and more of daily life onto the grid, this is not ecological stewardship. It is simply a transfer of energy demand from fossil fuels systems to mineral-intensive electrical systems. And when we include the fossil fuels require to mine and refine the materials, and build the factories and supply chains, we realize that the total footprint remains immense, and in many cases grows even larger.

Copper reveals the incompatibility of endless electrification with ecological limits. Even if we improve recycling (which we should), even if we reduce waste (which we must), the sheer scale of the so-called “transition” outstrips what recycling or efficiency gains can provide. Recycling requires metal to already exist in products; it cannot create new copper out of thin air. And most copper is already locked up for decades in buildings, grids, and long-lived equipment.

As we confront the material limits of electrification, including the tightening constraints around copper, it becomes important to look not only at the global system but at the local choices being made in our own backyard. Our utility’s recent decision to raise the base rate for an electrical connection to $67 per month reflects a philosophical choice about how the cost of the electrical system is distributed across a community.

A high base charge is one of the most regressive pricing structures a utility can adopt. It shifts the financial burden away from high-consuming, high-income households and onto those who use the least electricity, often because they cannot afford to use more. Someone who keeps their usage low, who heats with wood or limits appliances, or who simply lives in a small home or ADU, must still pay the same fixed fee as someone whose electricity use is several times higher. A family using 150 kilowatt-hours each month pays the same base charge as a household burning through 2,000. The less you use, the higher your effective price per unit becomes.

This runs directly contrary to both fairness and ecological reality. If we take the limits of copper and other materials seriously, if we acknowledge the impossibility of mining enough metal to electrify everything at current levels of consumption, then the only path that aligns with the physical world is one that reduces total demand. Yet a high base fee effectively penalizes conservation and rewards consumption.

A cooperative that sees itself as championing a sustainable future should not choose a pricing structure that weakens the incentive to conserve, nor should it put the heaviest burden on the members least able to absorb it. OPALCO should instead choose a pricing structure that embodies the logic that in a finite world, luxury consumption should not be subsidized by those living within modest means.

Our community sits at the intersection of global limits and local decisions. The copper mined in South America or Africa to supply the wires, transformers, chargers, and heat pumps for our local electrification projects carries with it enormous ecological costs: destroyed habitat, poisoned water, and broken communities. When our utility raises a fixed charge so high that it dulls the incentive to conserve, it deepens the disconnect between the story we tell about “clean energy” and the hidden damage that energy system imposes elsewhere. It shifts responsibility onto those who already use the least while enabling the pattern of overshoot that is driving global ecological breakdown.

So what does this mean for our community?

It means we must shift the conversation. Instead of asking: How can we electrify everything? we should be asking: How can we reduce our total energy use to levels the Earth can sustain?

Instead of: How do we maintain our current lifestyles with a different energy source? we should ask: What forms of living reduce our dependence on massive industrial systems altogether?

And instead of: How can we build more? we must ask: How can we live better with less?

This shift is not defeatist. It is liberating. It reframes climate and ecological action from a technological arms race, one that requires more mining, more energy, and more machines, into a cultural transformation that reduces harm at the source. It suggests that true sustainability lies not in replacing fuels, but in replacing habits; not in expanding infrastructure, but in shrinking demand; not in “green growth,” but in living within the limits of a finite world.

Copper, in its scarcity and rising extraction costs, is telling us something profound. It is telling us that the age of industrial abundance is not only ending, it must end, for the sake of the living world that sustains us. Our task as a community is to acknowledge this reality and chart a path that aligns with ecological truth rather than industrial fantasy.

Because the real question is not whether so-called “clean energy” can save our way of life and prevent blackouts. The real question is whether we are willing to change our way of life in order to save what’s left of the Earth. In the age of escalating ecological overshoot, the most ethical kilowatt-hour is not the one produced “cleanly”; it is the one we never had to generate at all.