“Today, data centres are less than 1% of copper demand, but that is expected to be 6% to 7% by 2050,” she told the Financial Times. “There is a lot of copper in data centres.”
BMO Capital Markets commodities analyst Colin Hamilton says that data centres themselves are becoming incrementally less copper intensive. “But getting the electricity to them, that is copper intensive,” he warns.
BHP expects global copper demand to rise to 52.5 million tonnes per year by 2050, up from 30.4 million tonnes in 2021—a 72% increase.
The long-predicted copper shortage has sparked a race to secure access to the metal, highlighted by BHP’s buy of Oz Minerals, its largest acquisition in a decade and its failed $49 billion bid for smaller rival Anglo American (LON: AAL) in May.
BHP’s main interest in targeting Anglo was its copper mines. An electrified world has become increasingly dependent on battery metals, particularly on…
