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There is plenty of copper in a substation, to provide a ground for the transformers. But Horry Electric and other producers are switching from pure copper ground wires, to copper-clad steel.

It's one of the first times the federal Clean Air Act has been used to prosecute air conditioner thieves in Georgia, but the case has given some local law enforcement agencies hope that the stiffer penalties do what new laws and declining copper prices have not - stop people from stealing copper.

Record prices for copper will not lead to large-scale use of cheaper alternatives by industrial consumers because copper retains clear technical advantages in wiring, French cable group Nexans (NEXS.PA: Quote) said on Wednesday. Benchmark copper prices CMCU3 on the London Metal Exchange breached the $10,000 mark for the first time last month after a rally driven by Chinese demand and tightening global supply. This has led some manufacturers and distributors to warn of a shift towards less expensive substitute materials like aluminium and zinc, while in France a surge in copper theft has led rail and power firms to consider alternatives. [ID:nLDE71E1Q1] [ID:nLDE6BF1HO] Nexans was increasingly using aluminium conductors and developing other alternatives but did not see a big shift away from copper, Chief Financial Officer Frederic Michelland said. "If you reasoned in purely financial terms, copper would have been abandoned a long while back in favour of aluminium," he told reporters at the group's head office. "Overall, copper still has a fundamental attractiveness that should last for some time to come." Substitution had remained limited in the past few years, representing between 450,000 and 600,000 tonnes annually compared with a global market of some 19 million tonnes of refined copper, Nexans executives said at a briefing on copper. Aluminium had claimed the largest share among copper substitutes and Nexans was notably developing use of copper-clad aluminium as a product that resolved some of the conductivity snags of aluminium. However, the cost advantage was not enormous and there were still technical drawbacks, Michelland said. "There is not yet a miracle (substitute) product," he said. Nexans, which supplies cables for sectors like energy, construction and construction, is one of the world's largest private consumers of copper, having used around 450,000 tonnes of the metal in 2010.

Since 2001 the price of copper has gone from less than $1 per pound to about $4 per pound on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange (CME). In response, looters and scavengers nationwide are stealing copper where they can. Within the last three years, copper thieves have disabled 130 cell tower sites across 17 jurisdictions in eastern Virginia and North Carolina. They stripped the wire from an airplane control tower in Ohio, endangering in-flight communications. They scuttled the irrigation system of Pinal County, Ariz., causing $10 million in damage and ruining a harvest. In Indianapolis, gutted refrigeration systems cost the state's largest food bank $400,000 in spoiled rations. In Jackson, Miss., thieves stole the copper from five storm sirens, which then failed to warn residents of an incoming tornado. In Kansas City, Mo., power outages due to stolen wire caused a credit union to freeze bank accounts, while a separate group allegedly used a backhoe to excavate 18,000 feet of backup power lines worth at least $500,000. In western Nevada, bandits on four-wheelers took out signal and control systems from Union Pacific (UNP) and Amtrak rail lines. In Minneapolis and Cincinnati, police say gangs use foreclosure lists like treasure maps, looting pipes from hundreds of homes, some of which exploded from gas leaks.