America's growing copper crisis finds a promising solution in Arizona's backyard

The United States has a copper problem. Simply put, the U.S. uses a lot of it and there aren’t enough American mines to pull it out of the ground fast enough.  But Ivanhoe Electric is moving toward becoming the first U.S.-based company to open a copper mine stateside in over a decade – and with copper prices shooting to record highs, the timing couldn’t be better.

President Donald Trump issued an executive order in March hoping to add copper to the critical minerals list, which would expedite permitting and offer tax incentives to mining companies. And on July 8, the president announced a 50% tariff on copper imports starting Aug. 1.

The U.S. only produces about half the copper it uses, ranking fifth in production behind Chile, Democratic Republic of Congo, Peru and China. Part of the reason is that it takes an average of 29 years for copper mines to begin production, due to a lengthy permitting and approval process.

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But Ivanhoe Electric’s Santa Cruz Project, about 40 miles south of Phoenix in Casa Grande, Arizona, aims to be up and running by 2028, only eight years since it started the project.

"It's like tomorrow in mining terms. It's incredibly, incredibly fast and incredibly efficient," said Taylor Melvin, president and CEO of the Tempe-based company. "One of our great advantages is being on private land here in Arizona. It allows us to have a much more streamlined permitting process, which allows us to have a more accelerated timetable to construction and production."

The company has been collecting core samples all over its 6,000 acres of land, plotting the best spots to mine. The mine will be underground and there’s enough copper to produce nearly 3 billion pounds of copper over the next 23 years. When completed, it would "place us in the top five or six mines in the United States," says Melvin.

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Another advantage of the mine is how the copper is extracted. There are only two copper smelters in the U.S., meaning much of the copper that’s mined gets shipped overseas to be processed. But Ivanhoe Electric will use leaching to extract the copper, due to the characteristics of the ore found at the Santa Cruz mine site.

"We'll be producing pure copper metal on this site ready for consumption by U.S. consumers," said Melvin.

And Americans – and the rest of the world – are set to consume a lot more. According to the International Energy Agency, demand for copper was around 26 million tons in 2024. In 2050, that number is predicted to reach nearly 40 million tons.

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But there’s one major problem: many mines will be empty by then, meaning production is set to go down unless new mines are established.

"Copper is absolutely a critical metal. We need copper for every aspect of our economy. We need it to expand and improve our electric grid. We need to support technological advances like artificial intelligence and the data centers that are required to support AI. And we absolutely need copper for our defense industry," said Melvin. "So it's really hard to imagine a metal that is more critical and in higher volume than copper."

That leaves Ivanhoe Electric and other U.S. copper companies in a strong position. Construction of the Santa Cruz project will employ 900 full-time workers, falling to around 600 after completion and during the mining phase. Many of the positions will pay six figures, and the jobs are all but guaranteed for the next 25 years.

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And with the backing of Trump and with hopes of officially moving copper onto the critical minerals list, mining companies have a positive outlook.

"In my 25 years in the natural resources in the copper mining industry, I've never seen a more supportive environment for domestic mining than we have right now," said Melvin. "We're in the perfect place at the perfect time with a project. To be a U.S. company with a product in the United States on private land that can produce copper metal to supply domestic demand is perfect at the time for Ivanhoe Electric, and it's a great environment in the United States for domestic mining right now."