Copper's Applications: An Electric Car Uses 83kg, a Petrol Car 23kg
Electrical and electronics lead copper demand at 32 percent, and electrification is projected to help push demand from 27 to 49 million tonnes by 2035.
Copper’s applications are the most evenly spread across sectors of any material in this series, which is precisely why the electrification-driven demand growth ahead is so consequential: it does not require replacing one dominant use, it adds new demand across nearly every sector at once.
Electrical & electronics
Wiring, busbars, connectors, the default conductor across almost every electrified system built in the last century.
Construction
Building wiring, plumbing, and roofing, copper's oldest large-scale commercial use.
Consumer & general products
Appliances, electronics, and a long tail of manufactured goods.
Transport
Vehicle wiring harnesses, and far more of it once the vehicle is electric, covered below.
Industrial machinery
Motors, transformers, and generators across every industrial sector.
The current sector breakdown
Copper demand splits across electrical and electronics applications (32 percent), construction (28 percent), consumer and general products (15 percent), transport (13 percent), and industrial machinery (12 percent). No single sector dominates the way batteries dominate cobalt or lithium demand, or stainless steel dominates nickel demand, reflecting copper’s role as the default conductor across almost every electrified system built in the last century.
Electrification multiplies copper intensity per unit
The clearest, most concrete illustration of copper’s coming demand growth is per-unit intensity:
What this means for demand growth
Global copper demand is projected to grow from roughly 27.0 million tonnes in 2024 to roughly 49.0 million tonnes by 2035, with a projected deficit risk of around 6.5 million tonnes if supply expansion, constrained by the capital intensity covered on this material’s financing page, does not keep pace. This is not a demand story driven by population or general industrial growth alone, it is substantially an electrification story, EVs, grid expansion, and renewable generation each independently adding copper intensity per unit deployed.
Sources: sector shares, intensity figures, and demand outlook reference this project’s own verified production and demand data (ICSG, IEA, industry copper intensity studies).