Rockwell Makes Electric Vehicle Industry More Sustainable

Electric vehicles (EVs) use four times more copper than conventional vehicles. The Resolution Copper Project has enough copper to manufacture almost 220 million EVs, or about half the global supply, by 2040. At 1.3 miles underground, getting to that copper safely and sustainably is the top priority for the Resolution Copper Project.

This project is a joint venture between mining giants Rio Tinto and BHP. These companies identified a copper deposit in the southeastern U.S. large enough to potentially to supply nearly 25% of US copper demand.

Rockwell Automation has a variety of options to help customers achieve sustainability goals— from visibility into current state to hardware that reduces energy use to software that identifies opportunities for optimization.

For Resolution Copper Mining, Rockwell targeted reducing energy use by implementing variable speed drives and increasing worker safety with distributed control. Since switching to variable frequency drives as part of its initial ventilation and chilling system upgrades in July 2023, Resolution Copper has seen a 5% increase in system efficiency and a 10% decrease in utility costs. That energy reduction equals about $1 million a year, a savings that Resolution Copper plans to allocate toward other sustainability initiatives.

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