Macquarie has upgraded its forecast of an increase in copper demand from data centres to be up to 420,000 tonnes in 2030 – 110% higher than previous estimates, Kallanish learns.

Last May, the research house estimated the boost in copper demand to be around 200,000 t by 2030, much lower than other reported estimates of around 500,000 t/y to over 2 million t/y at the time.

“Given recent developments, we have updated our estimates for both the copper required for the energy infrastructure to power the data centre, and the copper in the data centre itself,” the analysts write in a note.

Macquarie anticipates the required power capacity of data centres to increase from 77 gigawatts (GW) in 2023 to 334 GW in 2030 – up 30% from previous estimates. As such, it forecasts the copper demand for the energy infrastructure to increase by around 155,000 t by the end of the decade. The use of the red metal inside the data centres is now estimated to increase from 175,000 t/y to 265,000 t/y of copper by 2030.

“In total, we now estimate the increase in copper demand for data centres will be 330,000-420,000 t in 2030, with a mid-point of 375,000 t,” they add.

Data centres, a major driver of copper demand globally, have seen increased attention in recent weeks, with Microsoft early this month announcing its plan to invest around $80 billion in AI data centres this year. Similarly, Meta said it would invest up to $65 billion to build out its AI infrastructure in 2025. Chinese AI company DeepSeek’s recent entry into the market has also sparked fears of Chinese dominance in the global AI race.

Yet, Donald Trump’s return to power has dampened the outlook for the metal this year. Early this month, BMI revised down its average annual copper price forecast for this year to $10,000/t this year from $11,000/t in October, citing headwinds from looming tariffs and potential reversals in energy transition policies.