Copper - Contd

Previous post here.

"Ever since Thomas Edison’s enterprise laid 80,000 feet of copper wires under streets in Lower Manhattan in 1882, lighting up one square mile, copper has proved its mettle as the metal of electrification. In the century and a half since then, as copper has gone on to wire the world, the staggering growth in consumption has turned it into one of the most important materials of modern civilization."

From Exec Summary, this S&P report here.

Today, the world mines ~23 MMT of copper, and consumes around ~28 MMT (including reuse of scrap) every year. This demand is set to increase to 42 MMT by 2040, driven by Energy, AI and data centres beyond its core uses in economy. 

Now, to contextualise Copper, following analytical insights with AI help:

From the table above, annual average copper:

• 2005: ~$3,676/t

• 2015: ~$5,510/t

• 2024: ~$9,142/t 

A pause here. Given that we are looking at other minerals as well, perhaps the key changes to the market are because of three waves:

• Renewables - wire + structures, windings, cabling, interconnects.
• Grid build-out + electrification: wiring, transformers, substations, distribution upgrades.
• EVs - motors, inverters, harnesses, charging infrastructure.
• AI - electricity delivery, cooling (Data Centres)

Two pointers that I find very interesting:

1. Data Centres are like mini cities in power consumption. 
• ~5,000 cities worldwide, 40-50k small towns(Small city of 100k people uses 50-100MW,  large city of 1 million people uses 0.5-1GW)
• ~11,000–12,000 data centres today 
• ~1,300 hyperscale centres already (100-300 MW)
• Many new data centres planned in clusters (emerging clusters could use 300-500+MW)
• Flat load, step-change compared to slowly growing cities,
• quick-reference “GW picture” looks like this (capacity): 2015 26 → 2020 47 → 2024 81 → 2025 ~100 → 2030 ~200–220 GW
• From current 100 to doubling in 2030. (5 years)
2.  IEA’s nuance matters here: data centres might be a minority share of global demand growth, but they can create acute regional bottlenecks (grid queues, transformer shortages, local transmission constraints).

• S&P report
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