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1) The unrest in Peru continues and is forcing Glencore's copper mine to run at a restricted capacity. Last week, the anti-government protests spilled over with an attack on the Antapaccay copper mine in Peru. Peru is the second biggest copper producer in the world but is in the middle of its worst civil unrest in over 20 years, which poses a risk to mining and transport activity which reflected on the price of copper. Two of the company's vehicles were burned down and housing areas were attacked, resulting in Glencore saying it would evacuate staff from the mine. The protesters are blocking roads, restricting the evacuation and transport of copper to the world, as the mine continues to run at a restricted capacity. Antapaccay is one of Peru's largest mines, producing about 136,000 tons of copper in the province of Espinar in the Cusco region. Peruvians are protesting since December 7th, when the leftist President Pedro Castillo after he tried to shutter Congress illegally.
2) An international team of researchers has developed a different way to generate and store energy by transporting sand into abandoned underground mines. In the paper that was published in the journal Energies, the researchers proposed the technique called Underground Gravity Energy Storage (UGES), which generates electricity when the price is high by lowering sand into an underground mine and converting that potential energy into electricity via regenerative braking and also lift the sand from the mine using electronic motors to store energy when electricity is cheap. Regenerative braking converts kinetic energy from a moving object and recovers energy that would otherwise be lost to heat. Julian Hunt, the lead author of the study, stated: "When a mine closes, it lays off thousands of workers. This devastates communities that rely only on the mine for their economic output. UGES would create a few vacancies as the mine would provide energy storage services after it stops operations." "Mines already hacve the basic infrastructure and are connected to the power grid, which significantly reduces the cost and facilities the implementation of UGES plants," he added. What this technology utilizes is moving sand on an elevator up and down the mine shaft to store and produce energy, in a very simplified explanation.