My friends of Acme Falls, I give you my fortune. A haypenny! Waco might be crazy, but he wasn't wrong about the value of a copper haypenny. A haypenny? It's real. He has a whole haypenny! Before the 1860s, haypenny's were made entirely of copper, but these days it's more like 2%. That's because over time, the price of copper outpaced the value of 1 US cent. It's also why you may hear headlines like these more often. In recent years, copper has been a popular target for criminals who sell it to make some quick cash. Copper has had its highs and lows, and right now, it's poised to be one of the great catalyst of a clean energy revolution. If we can get our hands on enough of it, that's because the world is going to need a lot. We're talking about producing wind turbines, solar panels, and electric vehicles. Globally, the amount of copper we're going to need to produce in the next 25 years will be as much as the entire world has produced in history. Experts predict this will cause the metals price to skyrocket up 75% over the next two years. Last year, the cost of copper broke records by reaching close to $11,000 per ton. This latest jump in value will likely push the price up even higher to $15,000 per ton. Copper is integral for the manufacturing of a variety of clean energy tech. In the case of EVs, 176 pounds of copper is needed to make just one. According to Goldman Sachs, EVs alone accounted for two-thirds of the jump in the global need for copper during 2022. So copper is actually used in a great quantity for these electric vehicles and other renewable energies much more so than what you would use in a traditional fossil fuel power plant or traditional cars. And there's no way around it either. We're going to need copper to get more EVs on the road and other green energy tech running. The American Solar Energy Society has said there is no viable alternative to copper in meeting the requirements of the energy transition. But as demand for copper grows, there's also been a recent decrease in its production. In China, the world leader in refined copper output, the industry is facing a crisis. A shortage of copper ore is forcing smelters in the country to drop off production. Mine closures in Latin America, which accounts for 40% of global copper production, have exacerbated the dwindling supply of ore. In the US, copper output has been slowed by an ongoing debate over American mining laws. The Biden administration wants to reform the legislation, some of which was first passed all the way back in the 19th century. This period of change has left mining executives frustrated and confused over why many of their proposed mining permits are being denied. Some, like the CEO of Copper Giant, Fremont and Mimarin, say they don't necessarily want an easing of environmental standards, just more clarity on the purring process. Helping you copper mines are really challenging wherever you are for a variety of reasons. And so that is delaying the decisions to make major new investments in mines for companies like ours. In others' industry, it's delaying that. And that is simply boasting what I'm very confident is going to be a coming shortage in copper. In the States, there's also the added problem of many copper reserves being located on or around Native American reservations. Almost 90 percent of these reserves are within 35 miles of tribal lands. We have our lawsuits in and everything. This is a holy place. It's going to be murdered. It's going to be killed. It's not over yet. We're still praying for those miracles that America would just stand up and do the right thing. Ultimately, the copper crisis boils down to this. It's essential for the clean energy transition, nothing we've found so far can replace it, and there's not enough of the metal to go around. This not only threatens to hamper the conversion to cleaner tech, but could also prevent the world from hitting its 2050 emission goals. With this movement towards carbon reduction investments, every one of those investments requires more copper. While mining initiatives have been seen as a major contributor to climate change, they're also essential to procuring much-deeded copper, and currently are only responsible for about 0.3 percent of global emissions. Though that number is expected to grow, as copper demand continues to climb.