Wood Mackenzie: The Hidden Metals Cost of Data Centres

The data centre boom is fuelling demand for far more than chips and cooling equipment.

According to new research from Wood Mackenzie, the biggest metals story sits outside the facility itself: in the substations, transmission lines, backup power systems and energy infrastructure needed to keep digital workloads online.

The research suggests that when these supporting systems are included, total metals consumption linked to data centre development is three to four times higher than estimates based solely on the facility.

As operators race to secure power for increasingly demanding AI workloads, the report argues that grid infrastructure is becoming the dominant driver of aluminium and copper demand.

The findings come from Wood Mackenzie's June 2026 report – Data centre metals demand: it's all about the infrastructure not internals – which examines how the global expansion of data centres is reshaping demand for key industrial metals.

“Most assessments of data centre metals demand stop at the server room door,” says Shashank Sriram, Senior Research Analyst, Aluminium Markets at Wood Mackenzie.

“That captures the smallest part of the picture.

“The infrastructure required to keep a modern data centre running, redundant power systems, on-site generation, transmission reinforcement, has a metals footprint that dwarfs what is happening inside the facility.

“At the system level, we are looking at three to four times the volume implied within the asset.

“For investors and grid planners, that is a material difference.”

Looking beyond the server room

Inside the facility itself, aluminium demand is heavily concentrated in cooling systems, which account for around 55% of internal consumption. Racking and enclosures represent a further 25%.

Copper, meanwhile, is critical for supporting high-density computing environments where power requirements and system complexity continue to increase.

Wood Mackenzie forecasts internal demand for both metals will grow by around 8% to 10% annually through the early 2030s.

However, that growth is not expected to continue indefinitely.

As operators adopt more efficient designs and AI-driven optimisation techniques, internal metals demand is projected to plateau before declining by approximately 2% to 3% annually.

Aluminium consumption within data centre assets is expected to peak at between 0.6 million and 0.9 million tonnes per year before gradually easing during the late 2030s.

The report therefore suggests that the long-term metals story is less about what sits inside the data centre and more about the infrastructure surrounding it.

The growing role of on-site power

One of the most significant drivers of metals demand is the increasing amount of power infrastructure being built directly alongside data centres.

As grid connection delays become more common and electricity availability tightens in key markets, operators are more often investing in dedicated energy assets to guarantee uptime.

These systems range from solar and wind generation paired with battery storage through to gas turbines, gas engines, solid oxide fuel cells and emerging small modular reactor concepts.

According to Wood Mackenzie, this additional layer of infrastructure effectively doubles the metals demand implied by the facility itself.

Aluminium is widely used across busways, structural housings and power distribution systems, while copper demand rises through high-load electrical interconnections and grounding infrastructure.

Crucially, these assets are not directly linked to compute volumes. Instead, they are built to ensure resilience and availability regardless of conditions on the wider grid.

Grid reinforcement becomes a major factor

The largest metals demand increase emerges at the network level.

Wood Mackenzie projects annual data centre-driven power capacity additions will rise from approximately 15GW to 20GW today to a peak of roughly 30GW to 33GW in the early 2030s.

Asia-Pacific is expected to account for more than half of global capacity additions during this peak period, while North America continues to lead the market in the earlier stages of deployment.

Meeting that demand will require extensive transmission and distribution upgrades.

These projects involve new overhead transmission infrastructure, substations, underground connections and utility-scale power generation assets.

In many cases, utilities are being forced to reinforce networks that were never designed to accommodate the concentrated load profiles associated with large-scale AI and cloud campuses.

At this stage, the report argues, metals demand is no longer being driven by the data centre asset itself but by the wider power ecosystem required to support it.

Aluminium dominates transmission conductors and utility-scale frameworks, while copper remains essential in substations, underground networks and generation-side electrical systems.

The report concludes that both metals are set to experience parallel growth as digital infrastructure expands.

When facility infrastructure, on-site power systems and grid reinforcement are considered together, total metals consumption reaches an estimated three to four times the volume suggested by the data centre asset alone.