although not listed as a mineral critical to us national security and the economy copper “will see its value soar” as the energy transition gains momentum according to experts american pacific mining corp usgdf is capitalizing on that transition with its portfolio of highgrade precious and base metal projects backed by three major mining partners namely rio tinto rio centerra gold inc cgau and dowa metals  mining “copper is what’s going to drive this ev revolution there is literally not enough copper in the world today to do what all these mandates are for the ev revolution” warwick smith ceo and director of american pacific told benzinga in a recent interview smith on the importance of copper “a gasolinepowered car on average has 18 pounds of copper an ev has 83 and if you drive a tesla it’s got 138 pounds of copper so it’s an awful lot of copper there are 700000 evs on the road today and they’re saying by 2028 they want 45 million” smith said copper will not only be needed for the ev revolution but to produce all forms of clean energy including wind solar and nuclear power which smith pointed out american pacific plans to help meet that demand “we’re sitting with 14 million tons up in alaska that we think can get significantly larger at almost 4 copper so it puts us in a very strong position and you’ve got your end user as a partner who owns the largest smelter so that it works well from that perspective for sure” smith said “if you’re going to go green you’re going green via copper that’s the only way that its going to end up working and there’s no substitute for it either american pacific owns nine projects all in the us containing not only copper assets but gold silver and zinc the latter of which is in high demand for the energy transition while supply is historically low how american pacific is positioned in the energy revolution american pacific’s palmer vms project located in southeast alaska hosts two ni 43101 compliant resources containing copper and zinc as well as gold and silver and dowa owns a 55 stake in the operation which significantly derisks the project the company also owns pastproducing madison mine a highgrade coppergold project in montana in which rio tinto holds an interest “i mean we’re working with dowa in alaska rio tinto down in montana and now centerra in nevada they’re all multibillion dollar companies that before they spend a dollar they want to know that they believe that they can find metals and that if and when they find it that they can put it in production” smith said due to american pacific being backed by mining majors the company has no problem funding its drilling projects and spends far more on exploration than most other juniors in comparison more than half of american pacific’s market cap is being spent on exploration “most companies our size are maybe spending 2 million or 3 million at the most on exploration we’re getting over 10 times that from its partners so when investors are looking at companies you want to find ones that are busy creating value” smith said we often say to people if you’re a family office a small fund or a retail investor and you’re interested in junior mining stocks look at ones that already have majors involved because in a lot of ways they’ve done a lot of the due diligence for you he said and obviously that’s the case with us read next development of uranium copper and nickel resources is critical to the transition to clean energy – sprott’s etfs plan to ride the forecasted growth