Copper is an essential ingredient in enabling the increased electrification of our energy systems. Henry Russell argues that a shortage of it could delay this at the very moment when energy demand is projected to grow significantly. He examines the limitations inherent to the responsible mining process and proposes actions for stakeholders to unblock supply for our low carbon electrified future.
Data centers, transmission and distribution networks, renewables; these are all key to our increasingly electrified future.
What connects them? They all require lots of copper. In fact, the production of renewable energy infrastructure is five times more copper intensive than conventional energy systems.1 And data center demand will require six times more copper to meet the growth of AI.2
However, the mining industry faces challenges in meeting the growing demand for copper due to bottlenecks in the production process, environmental and social concerns, and regulatory barriers. Responsible mining standards, although increasingly adopted, are still underutilized, fragmented and detached from the mine design and permitting process, leading to project delays and inefficiencies.
To ensure a secure and resilient supply chain for copper, it is essential to harmonize these standards, integrate them into national permitting regulations, adopt good stewardship on the investor side and ensure this is all implemented responsibly by miners. We see a clear opportunity for multi-stakeholder coordination to unblock supply for our low carbon electrified future.
Read the full paper for a deeper dive into our key recommendations.
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