It is not only the next generation of cars which will be powering the growing demand for copper. The metal is essential for the technology used to produce renewable power through wind, solar and hydro generators.In addition, the new centres of power generation are often kilometres away from the existing grids – and many thousands of kilometres of high-voltage copper cables are needed to connect them.South Africa alone needs to invest around R390 billion to expand the local grid.Then there is storage – and not only for battery-powered vehicles. IDTechEx has forecast that the demand for energy storage will grow from 0.1 terawatt hours (TWh) in 2019 to around 3.2 TWh by 2029. Those batteries will need millions of tons of copper. At the cell level, copper is used in anode current collectors, and at the pack level, it is used in the electrical interconnects such as busbars, cables, and wiring, according to the International Copper Association.Copper is also needed for power generation.According to ThinkCopper, the generation of electricity from solar and wind uses four to six times more copper than fossil fuel sources.Copper is at present irreplaceable in the core energy transition technologies, which are wind turbines, solar panels and energy storage systems.One wind farm can contain between 2 000 and 7 000 tons of copper. A photovoltaic solar power plant requires approximately 5.5 tons of copper per megawatt of power generation.The challenge will, therefore, be sourcing enough copper. S&P Global Market Intelligence warns that copper demand could outpace supply by around 50 million tons a year by 2035. For perspective, this is twice as much copper as was needed by the industrial revolution between 1900–2022.There are, however, rapid advances in technology which are reducing the amount of copper needed. Energy storage is both static, as in the 194 MWh Hornsdale Power Reserve in Austria, or mobile as in a 0.067 MWh electric car.At present there are around 80 kilograms of copper in electric vehicles (EVs), compared to 20kg in a conventional vehicle.Goldman Sachs and consultancy CRU Group predict that this will drop to around 51-56kg per EV by 2030."It may be the first crack in the story on the demand side," CRU analyst Robert Edwards is quoted as saying. "Some of the projections out there have been very aggressive in terms of potential green energy demand (for copper)."
