Copper is the new oil — and supply isn't keeping up

Every electric vehicle contains roughly four times the copper of a combustion engine car. Every offshore wind turbine swallows around eight tonnes per megawatt. Multiply across the energy transition pipeline and the demand curve bends sharply upward through 2030.

Supply, meanwhile, has been quietly stalling. Chilean ore grades have fallen by a third in two decades. Peru's flagship projects have been delayed by community protests. New African projects in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Zambia carry political risk that western lenders are increasingly unwilling to underwrite.

The result is a structural deficit that most analysts now see widening from 2027 onward. The fix — higher prices that justify a new generation of mines — takes a decade to deliver, because the average copper project moves from discovery to first production in roughly fifteen years.

For investors, the playbook is unusually clear. For policymakers, it is uncomfortable: the energy transition is, among other things, a copper-intensity transition, and the world is short of copper.