Electrification Won’t Crash On Copper: Debunking Latest Claims

The April 2025 paper by Cathles and colleagues in SEG Discovery, Copper: Mining, Development, and Electrification, examining global copper supply constraints in the context of electrification and renewable energy, is rapidly becoming influential in industry and policy circles. It is important to closely scrutinize its assertions and underlying assumptions, as it could inadvertently shape future investment decisions and policy directions in ways that might impede rather than support the global energy transition.

Why? It’s off by a factor of 100 at minimum on copper requirements for energy storage. It’s off by a less egregious but still large factor on copper requirements for electric vehicles. It ignores substitutability of copper with aluminum and other materials, and the zero-copper sodium-ion batteries increasingly being deployed, and instead leans into a copper maximalist solution as if it were the only solution. Then it underplays copper recycling by a considerable amount as well, maximizing the new mining required. Its conclusions aren’t remotely credible as a result.

To begin with, the authors assume electric vehicles will always require around 80 kg of copper per vehicle, positioning themselves at the high end of current industry usage. Electric vehicles have historically contained between 60 and 80 kg of copper, spread across battery packs, wiring harnesses, and electric motor windings. While copper’s high conductivity makes it an obvious choice, it is increasingly clear that innovation and smarter design can dramatically reduce this dependence.

Oddly, in a 2024 paper he used 60 kg per vehicle, yet in this paper he used 80 kg. It’s clear he and his co-authors were considering the absolutely worst case scenario, not a remotely realistic one.

A range of emerging technologies and strategies mean that electric vehicles will push copper requirements as low as 20 to 30 kg per vehicle, perhaps lower. For instance, shifting to higher-voltage architectures (800 volts or greater) reduces the necessary cable thickness, saving 6-10 kg of copper per vehicle. Porsche Taycan, Hyundai Ioniq 5, Kia EV6, Lucid Air, and various upcoming models from GM and Ford all include this.

Tesla and GM are already proving the viability of aluminum wiring, cutting copper use by 10-15 kg per vehicle in wiring harnesses. The wires are lighter and cheaper, but slightly thicker and slightly less efficient at conducting electricity, with the end result being a net overall gain.

Further gains are achievable through integrated battery architectures, such as cell-to-pack or cell-to-chassis designs, pioneered by Tesla’s 4680 and BYD’s Blade batteries. These configurations eliminate intermediate wiring, reducing copper usage by as much as 10 kg per vehicle. While the 4680s are likely to be a dead end, BYD’s Blade batteries are very much on the road.

Advanced motor designs, including axial-flux motors or aluminum-based windings, also promise to slash copper requirements by up to 50% compared to traditional radial motors, providing another 8-10 kg advantage.

Busbar optimization is another practical lever to significantly reduce copper consumption in electric vehicles. Leading battery manufacturers such as CATL, BYD, and LG Energy Solution are already deploying improved busbar designs, including optimized geometries, enhanced thermal management, and increasingly, aluminum and composite materials. These innovations alone can realistically eliminate 5 to 8 kg of copper per battery pack, contributing directly to lighter, more cost-effective, and sustainable electric vehicle manufacturing.

When coupled with higher energy-density battery chemistries, including silicon-rich anodes and emerging solid-state cells, the overall battery pack size shrinks, further trimming copper requirements. There are already 300 wH/kg LFP batteries on the market, and 500 wH/kg is commercially available from CATL today. That’s another 5-8 kg per battery.

Replacing traditional wiring harnesses with wireless communications systems inside electric vehicles offers a practical route to further copper reduction. Firms like Aptiv and Bosch are already deploying zonal architectures and wireless control technologies that drastically simplify wiring. By eliminating extensive harnesses previously required to connect sensors, control units, and actuators, wireless approaches can realistically trim another 5 to 10 kg of copper per vehicle, streamlining assembly processes and reducing material costs.

Innovations in thermal management systems present further copper-saving opportunities. Tesla’s Octovalve cooling design is an example of this shift, using aluminum and composite plastic materials instead of traditional copper-based cooling circuits. Such solutions, with advanced materials and optimized heat transfer technologies, can easily remove an additional 2 to 5 kg of copper per vehicle.

These incremental innovations aren’t theoretical. They are in vehicles today, removing copper requirements. The more copper is a constraint, the more of these will be used. The solution to limited availability of copper is high copper prices. The likelihood is that copper per EV will be a quarter or less than Cathles et al. conclude.

This is before we get to advances in labs, where enormous amounts of attention is being paid to increasing efficiencies, reducing costs, and substituting materials. A recent advance in carbon nanotube (CNT) coil technology developed by the Korea Institute of Science and Technology could significantly reduce copper demand in electric motors. By using liquid-crystal–purified CNT coils that can power a motor without any metal, researchers have demonstrated stable rotational control in an actual motor, offering a lightweight, high-efficiency alternative to traditional copper winding. If this pans out, that could eliminate the 10-25 kg in electric motor winding as well, effectively removing copper constraints entirely from the equation.

As a note on this, Cathles should understand at least the basics of innovation. He’s been involved in fracking his entire academic career, and the advances in horizontal drilling, materials, drill heads, control systems and the like that unlocked the shale revolution he wants climate action to depend heavily on didn’t exist. Of course, most of those advances were much smaller increments over much longer periods of time than electrification cycles allow, so he and his co-authors may think that reduction of copper, if possible, would take decades.

What are the authors arguing for instead? Hybrid cars that continue to burn fossil fuels. Solutions which burn fossil fuels, just less of them, are a feature of Cathles’ preferred solution set, making it a non-starter as a real climate solution.

The paper also makes unsupportable assumptions regarding the copper intensity of renewable energy systems, particularly regarding grid-scale storage. Cathles’ scenarios envision vast arrays of lithium-ion batteries deployed globally providing 5 full days of energy storage to manage the intermittency of solar and wind generation, inherently a copper-intensive solution.

In doing so, the authors neglect practical, lower-copper alternatives like pumped hydro storage, thermal storage, and increasingly sophisticated demand-response and smart-grid management approaches. Pumped hydro, already comprising over 95% of global grid-scale energy storage capacity, uses a fraction of copper per megawatt-hour than lithium-ion battery storage and has abundant untapped global potential.

Countries worldwide continue to rapidly expand pumped hydro storage precisely because of its cost-effectiveness and lower resource intensity. China is the best example of this, of course. It has 365 GW, likely about 14 TWh of pumped hydro in operation, in construction today or in plan to start construction by 2030. As I keep noting, the ANU closed loop, off-river pumped hydro global GIS study found 100 times the resource capacity for all energy storage globally.

Thermal seasonal storage is already a well established solution in multiple countries as well, with aquifers below ground targeted with the same directional drilling that enabled fracking being injected with heat in the summer and cold in the winter using modern heat pumps to deice runways and provide commercial and residential heat. Manufactured insulated reservoirs and phase change material are being used for seasonal thermal storage as well. A vast amount of the energy requirements Cathles’ et al. lean upon with their copper maximalist position is for heat, and there are alternative approaches available for it.

The requirements for battery storage aren’t going to be the absurd five days they assert and won’t even come close to a day. While the cheap price of battery energy storage systems (BESS) means that they are going to be more dominant as a storage solution than I expected in my first projection of grid storage requirements from a few years ago, the requirement is shifting to energy, not power, and that will favor systems which decouple the two. To give them the benefit of the doubt, let’s assume that they are only off by a factor of five in terms of battery requirements.

The same innovations that are dropping copper requirements in electric vehicles are already dropping copper requirements in grid battery energy storage systems. China’s LFP BESS auction in December for 16 GWh of storage closed at an average of $66 / kWh for 20 years of installed, operated, and maintained storage. That was achieved by plastic wrapping cells with a simple bus architecture high in aluminum dropped on top of the cells. Thermal management with LFPs is much less of a concern than with lithium-ion, so once again reduced copper. A lot of the copper in EV battery backs, motors, and control systems just doesn’t exist in BESS farms.

Sodium-ion battery cells stand out as an increasingly compelling alternative for grid-scale energy storage, primarily due to their inherently low cost, abundant raw materials, and critically, their potential to eliminate copper entirely at the cell level. Unlike lithium-ion chemistries, which rely heavily on copper current collectors, sodium-ion batteries can comfortably use aluminum current collectors on both electrodes, effectively driving the copper content close to zero. Given these strengths, sodium-ion battery storage systems are poised to gain significant market share.

Is there anything else regarding sodium-ion batteries worth considering? Yes, multiple manufacturers are introduced EVs with them, albeit currently short range ones. The chemistry has a lot of advantages, and current energy densities are likely to increase into the same range, around 250 wH/kg as the lithium-ion batteries Tesla uses in a lot of its vehicles. Once again, plummeting copper requirements from EVs.

Returning to grid storage, that leaves only the copper in the BESS to be accounted for. With aggressive substitution of aluminum for copper throughout the entire battery energy storage system, the copper content can be reduced dramatically, typically down to less than 0.2% of the total balance-of-system (BOS) mass.

What do Cathles’ et al. use?

10%, the norm for a lithium-ion battery which is already a minor case in grid storage. Off by a conservative factor of five in battery requirements and off by a factor of 20 or so in copper requirements. That’s off by two orders of magnitude with technologies that are proven, scaled, and deployed today, not magic. The authors clearly weren’t looking for reasons that they might be wrong, or realistic scenarios based on deployed solutions, but for an absurd worst case scenario.

Once again, the solution to limited availability of copper is high copper prices.

While it’s impossible to sort out the basis of the paper’s assumptions about copper requirements per power plant type as they don’t spell out how they arrive at them, the ratio of onshore to offshore wind copper demand leaps out. The assumption I make is that they are assuming a lot of copper core HVDC and other transmission to bring the wind energy to market. Once again, they are ignoring substitutability with aluminum. Modern transmission uses carbon fiber cores with annealed aluminum conductors, not steel and copper, because it’s lighter, heat resistant, and doesn’t sag, allowing much more power with the same number of pylons. As a proof point, Pakistan with its extreme heat has reconductored vastly more of its existing transmission and distribution infrastructure than North America or Europe has. TCS finds that new-build transmission in the developed world is cheaper with their modern cables because fewer pylons are required. The other multipliers for copper requirements are merely suspect.

Another critical assumption the paper underplays is copper recycling. The authors conservatively assume recycling rates will plateau around 35% by 2050. This assumption stands in sharp contrast to authoritative industry and policy forecasts. Multiple respected organizations, including BHP, the International Energy Agency, and McKinsey, have highlighted the growing viability and likelihood of significantly higher recycling rates in response to technological improvements, regulatory incentives, and rising copper prices.

Recycling systems are steadily becoming more efficient, particularly in high-value industries like electronics and automotive manufacturing, with achievable recycling rates potentially reaching 45% to 50% by mid-century. This higher recycling potential significantly mitigates projected primary copper mining demands, presenting a far less constrained future than the authors suggest.

Again, the solution to limited availability of copper is high copper prices.

I didn’t bother to assess the claims of copper reserves and resources. I suspect that there will be even more errors there that maximize the problem. I discussed minerals availability at length with global leading expert on the subject recently, Gavin Mudd, director of the centre for critical minerals intelligence at the British Geological Survey (part 1, part 2). We agreed that the pessimists were wrong and that while developing mines and maximizing recycling were constraints, they weren’t remotely insurmountable.

It is useful to contextualize the primary author’s background when evaluating the paper’s assumptions. Lawrence Cathles is a respected geoscientist with extensive experience in resource geology and fluid flow modeling, maintaining a high academic reputation throughout his career. However, around 30% of Cathles’ substantial publication record relates directly to fossil fuel extraction, including hydraulic fracturing and shale gas development.

He notably co-authored a widely-cited critique of Robert Howarth’s seminal 2011 study on methane leakage from fracked natural gas production. Howarth’s research demonstrated alarmingly high methane emissions from shale gas operations, challenging claims that natural gas was significantly better for the climate than coal. Cathles, in response, argued that methane leakage was substantially overstated, a position that subsequent extensive empirical research has repeatedly called into question.

Studies since consistently find significantly higher methane leakage rates than industry claims across the value chain from extraction to distribution to use, severely undermining the climate credentials of natural gas. My previous analyses have demonstrated the persistent pattern of underestimating methane emissions in official industry and government inventories, highlighting the severe climate risks posed by widespread reliance on natural gas. My work with an EU-Canada dialogue on methane emissions reductions from the fossil fuel industry made it clear to me that the industry has no clue how much methane is leaking or where without rigorous inspection and monitoring that they aren’t doing.

The above chart is the official representation per US industry data. There are a couple of points to understand about it. The first is that by itself it eliminates the CO2 reductions of switching from coal to natural gas in the United States. The second is that it’s probably wrong for the USA especially by a factor of two. Norway’s numbers I mostly trust as they engineered their systems to almost eliminate leakage and venting from the start, and have rigorous monitoring and verification measures in place.

Cathles’ arguments center on what he considers pragmatic resource utilization, advocating nuclear power and natural gas as more viable, resource-efficient paths than rapid, renewable-heavy strategies. His position is not outright anti-renewable; rather, he emphasizes caution regarding perceived resource constraints and advocates slower, more measured transitions involving established fossil and nuclear infrastructure. That he’s wrong doesn’t mean he isn’t sincere.

While reasonable caution is indeed warranted regarding copper and other minerals, Cathles’ biases toward fossil fuel infrastructure appear to overly shape some of his policy recommendations. Natural gas, if methane emissions were genuinely controlled at scale, something rarely achieved in practice, will indeed play a limited transitional role, offering clear advantages over coal in emissions and pollution reduction. However, given repeated empirical demonstrations of persistent methane leaks, advocating gas as a central climate solution remains deeply problematic.

Cathles and colleagues chose to publish their paper in SEG Discovery, a professional trade journal sponsored by the Society of Economic Geologists. SEG Discovery is reputable and credible within the economic geology community but is explicitly not a rigorously peer-reviewed academic journal. This distinction matters greatly. Academic peer review typically challenges fundamental assumptions like per-vehicle copper content, recycling potential, and overlooked alternatives such as pumped hydro or aluminum substitution, likely leading to more nuanced and realistic scenarios. While SEG Discovery’s industry orientation facilitates rapid and practical dissemination, it bypasses the intense scrutiny and refinement peer review would offer.

My assumption is that no peer reviewed journal would publish the paper and that it has a string of rejections due to its obvious failings. As such, they settled for a trade journal publication that looks like a peer-reviewed one. It’s certainly being treated that way in discussions, which is unfortunate. However, they might also have chose to publish there because it’s more widely read in industry and policy circles, so their arguments and opinions would reach a broader audience. It’s certainly getting far more attention than it deserves.

Originally I thought this paper was better than Simon Michaux’ incredibly bad 275 pages of blatantly wrong modeling of the global energy system and materials requirements. The conclusions weren’t as erroneous. I wrote about all the bad assumptions and faulty logic in that turgid mess a couple of times, most recently when the Finnish Geological Survey made the mistake of taking it from a blog post on their website to publishing it in their theoretically peer reviewed house journal, giving it a veneer of respectability it simply does not merit.

However, the more I dug into the underpinnings of Cathles’ et al paper, the more I found Michaux’ work being referenced as if it were credible. Indeed, many of the assumptions in the underlying spreadsheet models are lifted directly from Michaux’ nonsense.

“Figure 2E shows that the increased mining would be 2.4 ATTMs per year (twice the business-as-usual) if only 30% of the noncarbon electricity generation is nonnuclear and the wind and solar variability is controlled by five days’ worth of battery storage (almost certainly woefully inadequate; Michaux, 2024b).”

The results of the new paper weren’t as ludicrous wrong as Michaux’ because the authors constrained themselves to what they thought they could justify, which as I noted is completely wrong, but they clearly agree with Michaux.

I spent more time and energy on this dissection of Cathles’ et al. because it’s more dangerous than Michaux’ nonsense. He’s a long term doomer crank and sole author, an expert on the dust from mining explosives with a history of crying wolf about resources. The three authors of this new paper have good track records, and Cathles’ h-index of 49 lends him respect. Unfortunately, with this paper he appears to be destroying his legacy.

Cathles’ study raises no valuable concerns about copper supply risks and the scale of mining expansion required for electrification. Policymakers and industry leaders indeed need to recognize and plan for significant mineral demand growth. The paper is off by a factor of 100 on energy storage copper demand and off by a lesser but still very large factor on EVs. It overstates renewables copper requirements and understates recycling. It’s probably using lowball estimates for copper reserves as well.

Policy makers and industry leaders should be ignoring this contribution from Cathles et al. It merely feeds the needs of the fossil fuel industry and the nuclear lobby, not informed decision making.