Resources · Issue 01
The copper bind
Electrification, grids and data centres all drink copper. The IEA’s 2025 outlook still sees a 30% mined-supply gap by 2035.
- Lithium
- Nickel
- Copper
- Rare earths
- Implied copper supply shortfall by 2035
- 30%
- Lithium demand growth to 2040 (STEPS)
- 5×
- Lithium demand, 2024
- +30%
- Typical new copper mine, discovery to first cathode
- ~12 yrs
Two metals, two clocks
The IEA’s 2025 Critical Minerals Outlook is less apocalyptic than the 2021 vintage — nickel, cobalt, graphite and rare earths look closer to balanced if announced projects ship. The exceptions are the ones that matter for electrification: copper and lithium. Lithium demand jumped nearly 30% in 2024 and is set to grow fivefold to 2040 under stated policies. Near-term lithium looks well supplied; the 2030s do not. Copper is the meaner problem. It is a mature, gigantic market whose demand still rises ~30% by 2040 because grids, EVs and now data centres are copper-intensive. The mine pipeline implies a 30% shortfall by 2035. Ore grades are falling. Capital costs are rising. Discoveries are thin. Lead times are a decade-plus.
China still sits on the refining step
Mining is geography. Refining is industrial policy. For battery metals and rare earths, supplies outside the leading producer still cover only about half of remaining 2035 demand in the IEA’s telling. LFP batteries — now nearly half the electric-car market, up from under 10% in 2020 — concentrate risk in purified phosphoric acid (China ~75%) and high-purity manganese. Sodium-ion diversifies the rock. It does not diversify the cathode plant. A ‘minerals strategy’ that only counts tonnes in the ground is a press release.
AI just joined the queue
Data centres are an electrical story first (see The power behind intelligence) and a copper story second: busbars, transformers, substations, the last mile of grid. They compete with EVs and with the buildout that lets solar actually land on a grid. That is the bind. You cannot electrify transport, compute and heat on 2020’s copper volumes, and you cannot will a porphyry deposit into production by 2028.
Prices will lie for years
Lithium already showed how a deficit narrative and a surplus print can coexist. Inventory, Chinese substitution, and the lag between price and new supply make minerals vicious to trade. The long view is still: copper’s supply curve is the least elastic of the major transition metals, and any serious grid build will need more of it than the current project book provides.
Investing lens
Horizon 8–20 years · Educational, not advice
Prefer quality copper with long reserve lives and political license over lithium beta. Treat refining, magnet metals and grid copper as strategic chokepoints, not generic commodity exposure.
Where the map points
- Low-cost copper miners in stable jurisdictions with brownfield expansions
- Copper recyclers and fabricators tied to grid and data-centre specifications
- Select rare-earth magnet and midstream names outside a single-country bottleneck
- Lithium only with a 2030s deficit view and a balance sheet that survives the current surplus
What can break it
- Demand destruction if EV or grid capex slips
- Resource nationalism and permit failure on the few large undeveloped deposits
- Technology substitution (sodium-ion, aluminium conductors) at the margin
CHART does not recommend securities, funds or trades. Figures can be revised by their publishers. Do your own research and consider regulated advice before allocating capital.
Sources
Every headline number traces to a named publisher. Contextual sources inform the essay, not the key stat.
- 01PrimaryInternational Energy Agency2025-05Global Critical Minerals Outlook 2025
Copper implied 30% supply shortfall by 2035; lithium fivefold demand growth to 2040 in STEPS.
- 02CorroboratedInternational Energy Agency2025-05Global Critical Minerals Outlook 2025 — Executive summary
Lithium demand +~30% in 2024. LFP near half of EV battery market. China dominant refiner for 19 of 20 minerals, ~70% average share.
Keep reading
The century-long reign of coal is ending
In 2025, renewable electricity generated more power than coal for the first time in the modern era. Solar did most of the work.
33.8%
Renewables share of world electricity, 2025
The power behind intelligence
Data centres used 485 TWh in 2025. The IEA’s base case still nearly doubles that by 2030 — and AI sites are growing three times as fast as the rest.
485 TWh
Data-centre electricity, 2025
The chip supercycle
Semiconductors did $792 billion in 2025. WSTS’s spring 2026 forecast put 2026 at $1.51 trillion — a 90% leap, almost all memory and AI.
$1.51 tn
WSTS spring-2026 forecast for 2026 sales
53 million tonnes is a 2022 scenario, not USGS
ICSG refined usage: 15.1 Mt in 2000, 25.9 in 2022, 28.2 in 2025. IEA STEPS reaches 37.5 Mt in 2050. S&P’s 2022 net-zero path went to 53. S&P’s own 2026 update stops at 42 in 2040. The viral chart is not a year-table.
37.5
IEA STEPS copper demand, 2050 (Mt)
793 million tonnes already. 53 is one year.
USGS/OWID mine production, summed year by year: 793 million tonnes, 1900–2022. ICSG: 396 million in 2000–2022 alone. S&P’s 53 million-tonne 2050 year is 7% of the century, not more than it. The slogan compared a year to a sum.
7%
53 Mt vs 793 Mt mined, 1900–2022
Ten million tonnes of scrap is the other mine
World refined copper in 2024 was 27.5 million tonnes: 22.8 from the ground, 4.7 from scrap. S&P 2026 has secondary more than doubling toward 10 million by 2040. The 53-million-tonne poster never drew this line.
10
Mt secondary refined, S&P 2026, 2040 path