Kurt House, co-founder and CEO of KoBold Metals, shares insights on revolutionizing the mining industry for the renewable energy transition. He discusses the enormous demand for essential metals like copper and lithium, and how AI and data science are pivotal in discovering these resources. Kurt recounts a significant copper discovery in Zambia, while balancing personal anecdotes from his family trips. He emphasizes the need for innovative exploration techniques and the importance of fostering a supportive culture in mining management.
The urgent transition to renewable energy demands innovative exploration techniques to increase the extraction of essential metals like copper and lithium.
KoBold Metals aims to redefine mineral discovery by using AI and data science to enhance exploration efficiency and accuracy in mining.
Deep dives
The Urgent Need for Metals in the Energy Transition
The transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy necessitates a significant increase in the extraction of metals such as copper and lithium. These materials are essential for building batteries and electric vehicles, highlighting the high demand for specific resources. The anticipated growth in the lithium market alone requires a tenfold increase over current levels to support electrifying the transportation sector. This urgent need underscores the importance of innovative exploration techniques to meet future material requirements.
Challenges of Traditional Mining Practices
Historically, large mining companies have prioritized dividends and share buybacks over investing in exploration and discovery, often spending less than 0.5 billion on exploration annually. This trend has resulted in a growing challenge known as E. Ruhm's law of mining, which reflects the increasing costs and declining efficiency of mineral discovery. With conventional exploration methods not yielding substantial results, the industry's reliance on outdated techniques has left a significant gap in identifying new deposits. The podcast emphasizes that current practices are inadequate to meet the rising demand for key metals.
Innovative Approaches to Mineral Exploration
Kobold Metals aims to revolutionize mining by integrating modern data science and AI with traditional geology to improve exploration success. The company leverages existing data collected over decades, much of which is public domain, but often disorganized, using advanced computational methods to sift through and standardize this information. By combining the expertise of data scientists, software engineers, and geoscientists, Kobold seeks to tackle the inherent uncertainties in mineral exploration. This approach is designed to yield better insights on potential new deposits, making exploration more efficient.
Exciting Discoveries in Zambia
Kobold Metals has found success in Zambia, a country identified as a prime location for new mineral discoveries due to its stability and rich mining history. The company focused on exploring deeper parts of the copper belt, where previous exploration had been minimal, leading to significant copper discoveries that surpass initial expectations on mineral quality. Their findings have validated their exploration hypothesis, indicating that targeted drilling within certain geological boundaries consistently yields high-grade copper. As a result, this success has the potential to transform the company into a key player in the mining sector through both their discovery machine and the practical application of their findings.
Moving from fossil fuels to renewable energy will require huge amounts of copper, lithium, and other metals. Kurt House is the co-founder and CEO of KoBold Metals. The company recently made a huge copper discovery in Zambia, and is looking for other metals in other places. Kurt's problem is this: How do you use AI – machine learning, data science – to find the metals we'll need for the energy transition?