About this episode

The episode discusses how Endolith is using microbes to enhance copper recovery from low-grade ore amidst rising demand and supply challenges.

Copper is moving from background commodity to frontline constraint. Demand is rising fast, high-grade deposits are getting harder to find, and the lead times for bringing new supply online remain brutally long. That matters not just for renewables and electrification, but for the basic energy resilience of modern life: the wires that keep lights on, water running, refrigeration working, and data centres scaling all depend on a metal the industry already knows is becoming harder to source. Host Sylvia Leyva Martinez is joined by Liz Dennett, founder and CEO of Endolith, whose career spans Wood Mackenzie, AWS, and NASA-linked astrobiology research, to explore a biological approach to one of mining’s toughest problems. Endolith uses microbial communities, what Dennett calls “the world’s oldest miners," to help recover more copper from low-grade ore in existing heap leach operations. The company’s core thesis is that copper supply can be made more elastic not by rebuilding mine sites from scratch, but by layering biology, sensing, and robust data architecture into brownfield operations that are already running.  Liz explains how that works on site: low-grade ore is stacked into…

People in this episode

Host: Sylvia Leyva Martinez

Guest: Liz Dennett

Topics covered

• biomining
• copper recovery
• microbial communities
• low-grade ore
• sustainable mining

Keywords

• biomining
• copper
• microbes
• low-grade ore
• sensing
• data architecture
• mining

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Endolith, Wood Mackenzie, AWS, NASA

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