Copper: The Reindustrialization Metal
America has decided to build again. Data centers, power generation and transmission, the defense industrial base, factories brought back onshore, electric vehicles and the network that charges them.
The United States imported 57% of the refined copper it consumed in 2025, and supplying more of it at home takes more capacity to process ore and scrap.
Copper in each part of the build-out.
Data centers. In April 2026 the Copper Development Association (CDA) told a House Natural Resources subcommittee: “Data centers are among the most copper-intensive facilities ever constructed… Every gigawatt of new AI computing capacity requires thousands of tons of copper.”
Power. Electricity has to be generated, stored, stepped up and down, and carried to where it is used. Copper is in the generator windings, the battery systems, the transformers, the substations and the cable that connects them. EIA’s Annual Energy Outlook 2026 release materials describe data-center load as “emerging as the dominant driver of long-term U.S. electricity growth.”
The defense industrial base. Copper is on the U.S. critical minerals list. Executive Order 14415, signed 20 July 2026, directs the Department of War to require prime contractors and subcontractors at any tier to trace their supply chains “back to the origin of raw materials.” S&P Global has said global defense spending could double to $6 trillion by 2040.
Manufacturing. In physical terms, reindustrialization means motors, drives, control panels, busbar and wiring.
Electric vehicles. A battery electric car carries copper in the motor, the battery pack and the wiring harness. The charging network it depends on is copper from the substation to the connector.
Global copper demand is set to rise about 50% by 2040.
On S&P Global’s forecast, demand reaches 42 million tonnes a year by 2040 while total production peaks in 2030; The American Copper Imperative covers the supply gap.
Scrap supplies about 30% of U.S. copper, and more than half of it is exported.
USGS reports that copper recovered from scrap contributed about 30% of U.S. copper supply in 2025, some 920,000 tonnes, most of it melted directly by brass and wire-rod mills. CDA described the United States to the same subcommittee as holding “the world’s second largest ‘urban mine’ of copper in use at approximately 85 million metric tons in existing buildings, infrastructure, and products.”
Most of that scrap is not finished here. In CDA’s testimony, “more than half of all U.S.-origin copper scrap generated each year is currently exported.” Of the 850,000 tonnes the United States refined in 2025, only 60,000 came through a refinery from scrap.
Two primary smelters operate today, against 16 in 1976 (CDA testimony, April 2026). The American Copper Imperative sets out what rebuilding that capacity involves.
Investors have named processing as the constraint.
In May 2025 Andreessen Horowitz wrote in It’s Time to Mine: Securing Critical Minerals:
“Processing, in particular, has become the critical chokepoint both technologically and financially.”
Copper ore carries other critical minerals with it.
On 7 November 2025 copper was added to the U.S. critical minerals list, placing it among the materials the federal government treats as essential to the economy and to national security. Copper projects are eligible for FAST-41 coverage. Copper processing is eligible for Department of Energy programs.
USGS finds that American porphyry copper systems carry a long list of critical minerals with them: rhenium, tellurium, tungsten, gallium, germanium, bismuth, antimony, indium and tin.
Each is separated at a different point in the chain. Roasting molybdenite concentrate yields molybdenum, and about 80 percent of all the rhenium the world mines. Selenium and tellurium accumulate in the anode slimes from electrolytic refining, which contain 1 to 4 percent tellurium. The rest are in the ore and, on the USGS account, have historically been discarded rather than recovered.
Falcon describes its own U.S. portfolio as copper-dominant, multi-critical-minerals exploration for the same reason.
Critical minerals recovered along the copper chain
What U.S. porphyry copper systems yield besides copper, and the stage at which each is separated.
Concentrate shipped abroad carries all of it with the copper.
America has the ore, the scrap and the demand. The largest shortfall in capacity is in the middle of the chain, where ore and scrap become metal. Falcon Copper is an American private company expanding and strengthening the domestic copper supply chain from end to end, across exploration, smelting and refining in the United States, and allied supply.
- Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, 2024 United States Data Center Energy Usage Report, LBNL-2001637, December 2024 (176 TWh in 2023, 4.4% of U.S. electricity; “roughly 325 and 580 TWh in 2028”). escholarship.org
- U.S. Energy Information Administration, Annual Energy Outlook 2026 release materials, 8 April 2026 (data-center load “emerging as the dominant driver of long-term U.S. electricity growth”). eia.gov
- U.S. Department of Energy, National Transmission Needs Study, December 2023 (within-region need up to 128% above the 2020 system by 2035, median of the high load growth case). energy.gov
- Executive Order 14415, Securing America’s Defense Supply Chains and Ensuring Domestic Acquisition of Critical Materials, signed 20 July 2026, 91 FR 46693. federalregister.gov
- International Energy Agency, Minerals used in electric cars compared to conventional cars, 2021 (53.2 kg against 22.3 kg; excludes steel and aluminium; basis is a 75 kWh NMC622 vehicle). iea.org
- Andreessen Horowitz, It’s Time to Mine: Securing Critical Minerals, McEntush and Price-Wright, 29 May 2025. a16z.com
- S&P Global Commodity Insights, Copper in the Age of AI: Challenges of Electrification, 8 January 2026 (global demand 42 Mt by 2040, up ~50%; total production peaks ~33 Mt in 2030, primary mined supply peaking near 27 Mt; global defense spending could double to $6 trillion by 2040). spglobal.com
- USGS, Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026: Copper, February 2026 (copper recovered from scrap about 30% of U.S. copper supply; 160 kt from old scrap and 760 kt from new scrap, about 920 kt together, about 80% of it recovered by brass and wire-rod mills; refinery output 850 kt, of which 60 kt secondary; net import reliance 57%; ore and concentrate exports ~340 kt). pubs.usgs.gov
- Testimony of Adam A. Estelle, President and CEO, Copper Development Association, to the U.S. House Committee on Natural Resources, Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources, hearing Powering the 21st Century with American Copper, 29 April 2026 (16 primary smelters in 1976; the 85 million metric ton urban mine; more than half of U.S.-origin scrap exported). The urban mine and scrap export figures are stated in the testimony without a source citation and are reproduced here as CDA’s own. docs.house.gov
- Federal Register, Final 2025 List of Critical Minerals, 7 November 2025, 90 FR 50494 (copper added). federalregister.gov
- Vikre, P., and others, Critical minerals in subduction-related magmatic-hydrothermal systems of the United States, USGS Scientific Investigations Report 2023-5082, 2023 (rhenium and tellurium routinely recovered; tungsten, gallium, germanium, bismuth, antimony, indium and tin historically discarded). pubs.usgs.gov
- John, D.A., Seal, R.R. II, and Polyak, D.E., Rhenium, chap. P of USGS Professional Paper 1802, 2017 (“about 80 percent of the rhenium obtained through mining is recovered from the flue dust produced during the roasting of molybdenite concentrates from porphyry copper deposits”). pubs.usgs.gov
- Goldfarb, R.J., and others, Tellurium, chap. R of USGS Professional Paper 1802, 2017 (1 to 4 percent tellurium in the anode slimes recovered during copper refining). USGS National Minerals Information Center, Selenium and Tellurium Statistics and Information (selenium recovered as a byproduct of the electrolytic refining of copper, accumulating in anode residues). pubs.usgs.gov
Also in Perspective
How the country built the capacity to make its own copper, and how it lost it, from Indigenous metalworkers and Paul Revere to national electrification.
Read →The United States consumes about 2,200 kt of refined copper a year, mines about 1,000 kt, and refines 850 kt. What closing that gap actually takes.
Read →Copper projects from exploration to refining, in the United States and allied countries, with the status of each.
Read →August 2026. U.S. copper figures on the USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026 basis, published February 2026; 2025 data are USGS estimates. Other figures carry their own sources above. Figures are stated as at the date of publication and are not updated between editions.
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