New Delhi: The world will soon face a copper shortage due to surging power demand from artificial intelligence data centres, the Economic Survey warned on Thursday, January 29, highlighting how critical minerals have become strategic choke-points in the global energy transition.
“The global energy transition is no longer solely determined by technology; it is increasingly constrained by who controls critical minerals,” the survey said.
Metals, including lithium, cobalt, nickel, copper and rare earth elements, have become strategic bottlenecks, shaping the low-carbon economy, influencing energy security, industrial competitiveness and geopolitical power, the survey said, noting that trade restrictions on critical mineral exports by source countries.
Copper price has become increasingly volatile due to mine outages in Indonesia, Congo and Chile, raising concerns about supply deficits in the medium to long term, given growing demand from the power sector and data centres worldwide, and trade protectionist measures, the survey said.
Massive material requirements
The survey illustrated the scale of investment required, citing that a 1 gigawatt wind turbine requires 2,866 tonne of copper, which would take 1,194 truckloads to transport.
To produce that much copper from ore with a 0.6 per cent yield, miners must process approximately 167-200 tonne of ore per tonne of copper produced, the survey said.
Using current estimates of 0.5-0.6 per cent yields at operating mines, with many large mines below 0.6 per cent and new projects around 0.4-0.5 per cent, the total material required would be 4,77,667 tonnes, or 1,194 truckloads of 400 tonne each, the survey calculated.
Those figures assume only copper-bearing ore, excluding waste rock, overburden, rejected material and processing losses, it added.
In real mines, total material moved is typically two to four times higher once waste rock stripping is factored in.
“If fully accounted for, total material moved per GW of wind power would likely exceed 1-2 million tonnes, not 0.48 million,” the survey said.
The figures illustrate the scale of investment India may need to make in renewable energy generation and the tremendous amount of energy required in the first place, the survey added.
