How AI and Electrification Reshape the Market Through 2040

Copper demand has historically tracked broad economic growth, construction cycles, and industrial investment. What is changing now is not that copper is suddenly “important.” It has always been important. What is changing is that multiple long-horizon drivers are expanding at the same time, pushing copper demand higher while supply remains slow to scale.

Recent analysis from S&P Global projects global copper demand rising from about 28 million metric tons in 2025 to about 42 million metric tons by 2040, a roughly 50% increase. Other major outlooks also project meaningful growth through 2040, even though the exact magnitude varies by scenario and assumptions.

This article explains what is driving the demand outlook through 2040 and what industrial users should take from the forecasts.

Historic copper demand patterns

For much of the modern era, copper demand has been closely tied to construction, grid buildouts, and general industrial growth. When housing, manufacturing output, and large infrastructure projects accelerated, copper demand rose. When macro conditions cooled, copper demand softened.

That cyclical pattern still exists, but it is increasingly overlaid by structural drivers that behave differently than traditional construction cycles. Market data and commentary from industry bodies and analysts continue to highlight how usage trends are shaped by both long-term electrification and shorter-term disruptions.

New demand drivers post-2025

After 2025, copper demand growth is increasingly shaped by sectors that are expanding because of system-level transitions, not because of a single business cycle.

The main drivers showing up consistently across reputable outlooks include:

• Grid modernization and expansion, including new transmission and distribution capacity and resilience upgrades.
  
  
• Electrification across industry, including higher power density in advanced manufacturing and critical infrastructure.
  
  
• Data infrastructure and AI-driven buildout, which increases baseline electrical requirements and pushes higher redundancy and reliability standards.
  
  

UNCTAD has also summarized the directional picture: demand growth toward 2040 is strong enough that meeting it may require major investment and substantial new mining capacity.

Why AI amplifies existing trends

AI does not create copper demand in isolation. It amplifies demand that is already rising from electrification and infrastructure.

AI data centers and compute-intensive facilities are designed around continuous power delivery, dense electrical distribution, grounding, redundancy, and increasingly sophisticated cooling and backup power systems. These are copper-intensive design requirements that scale with reliability expectations, not just server counts.

This is one reason copper demand becomes more persistent. AI infrastructure is not a one-time purchase. It anchors long-lived electrical systems, expands load requirements, and drives upstream investments in grids and industrial capacity that also consume copper.

What forecasts consistently agree on

Forecasts differ on exact tonnage depending on assumptions about policy, technology adoption, and growth. But the most credible outlooks tend to agree on a few core points:

1. Demand is projected to rise materially through 2040. S&P Global’s analysis projects about 50% growth from 2025 to 2040.
   
   
2. Electrification is a durable demand driver. IEA scenario-based outlooks show meaningful growth in copper demand through 2040, with higher growth in more aggressive transition scenarios.
   
   
3. Supply responsiveness is limited in the near term, which increases the system’s sensitivity to disruptions. S&P Global highlights a potential supply shortfall if new supply and recycling do not scale fast enough.
   
   

The takeaway is not that any single forecast number is “the answer.” The consistent signal is that copper demand growth is becoming structural, while supply remains constrained by development timelines and processing capacity.

Implications for industrial users

For industrial users, the practical implication is that copper should be managed less like a routine input and more like a planning variable.

A few considerations tend to matter most:

• Budgeting and procurement exposure: Persistent demand growth increases the likelihood of volatility and supply tightness, especially when disruptions occur.
  
  
• Operational loss sensitivity: As demand tightens, copper losses inside operations become more consequential because replacement copper comes from a constrained supply system.
  
  
• Long-term resilience: Forecasts repeatedly emphasize that meeting projected demand requires large investment and long lead times, which means industrial strategies benefit from focusing on controllable levers, not just market timing.
  
  

For ElectraMet’s audiences, this is where copper recovery becomes relevant as a materials-management lever. Recovering copper from wastewater does not replace mining or traditional recycling, but it can reduce avoidable losses within existing operations, lowering the amount of copper that must be repurchased into a tighter market.