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How much energy is expended annually in mining, refining, storing, and allocating gold/precious metals?
by ISL 9y ago
How much energy is expended annually in mining, refining, storing, and allocating gold/precious metals?
- saalweachter 9y agoA quick google says about $900 / oz, with about $600 / oz being "direct mining costs" and the rest being things like "mine exploration and development". If all 900$ were going to crude oil, that'd be about 15 barrels / oz and 25 MWh / oz. Given that we mine about 100M oz / year, that places the upper bound at about 2500 TWh / year. Given that global energy production was about 170,000 TWh, that's actually a possible figure, although I'd be surprised if the energy consumption was actually half that (there have to be some non-energy costs involved, right?).