Copper is the missing ingredient of the energy transition

At 76, RICHARD ADKERSON is an elder statesman of the copper industry. For two decades he has been CEO of Freeport-McMoRan, one of the world’s biggest copper producers, valued at $55bn. He has seen it all, from short-term booms and busts to the China-led supercycle, and from industry fragmentation to consolidation. Freeport itself has pioneered some of the trends. In 2007, when it paid $26bn for Phelps Dodge, an Arizona-based company dating back to the Wild West days of the 19th century, it was the biggest mining transaction ever. It was also a masterstroke. Not so the company’s ill-fated diversification into oil and gas less than half a decade later, which he says was not his idea. That caused a near-death experience and had to be swiftly unwound after both energy and metal prices crashed in 2016.