Research from consultancy Wood Mackenzie (WoodMac) finds that the base metals required to power the global data centre boom extend far beyond the servers, cooling units and enclosures inside these facilities.

The consultancy highlights, in a media release, that when grid reinforcement, transmission networks and facility-level power systems are included, total system-level metals consumption reaches an estimated three to four times the volume implied by the asset itself.

WoodMac’s research, titled ‘Data centre metals demand: it’s all about the infrastructure not internals’, sets out why the conventional framing of this demand story is incomplete and what that means for commodity markets, infrastructure investment and energy policy.

“Most assessments of data centre metals demand stop at the server room door,” says WoodMac senior research analyst, aluminium markets Shashank Sriram.

“That captures the smallest part of the picture. The infrastructure required to keep a modern data centre running, redundant power systems, on-site generation and 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,” Sriram says.

The research indicates that, inside the data centre, aluminium demand is concentrated in cooling systems at about 55% of internal use, and racking and enclosures at about 25%.

WoodMac notes that copper anchors performance at high-density nodes, driven by power density and system complexity rather than structure.

Demand for both metals grow at about 8% to 10% a year into the early 2030s, before plateauing and declining at about 2% to 3% a year as efficiency gains and AI-driven design optimisation take hold.

Total aluminium demand within the asset peaks at 600 000 t/y to 900 000 t/y before trending lower toward the late 2030s.

In short, WoodMac says, the internal demand profile is front-loaded and bounded, even as underlying compute demand continues to rise.

WoodMac explains that the first structural shift occurs at the facility boundary.

As grid connections slow and local power capacity tightens, the consultancy says operators are building power systems into the facility itself.

It notes that on-site generation now spans solar and wind with storage, gas engines and turbines, solid oxide fuel cells and emerging small modular reactor concepts.

None of this scales with compute load. It sits alongside it, engineered to guarantee uptime regardless of what the grid does, says WoodMac.

WoodMac estimates that this layer alone effectively doubles the metals demand implied within the asset, with aluminium expanding across busways, structural housings and distribution systems, and copper scaling across high-load interconnections and grounding infrastructure.

Additionally, the second shift occurs at the grid.

WoodMac explains that yearly data centre-driven power capacity additions are projected to rise from about 15 GW to 20 GW today to a peak of about 30 GW to 33 GW in the early 2030s, stabilising at structurally higher levels thereafter.

It notes that Asia-Pacific will account for more than half of global additions during the peak phase. North America leads early deployment.

“These are not incremental grid connections. They are network reinforcement programmes responding to load profiles that existing infrastructure was not designed to absorb,” the consultancy says.

At this stage, WoodMac says metals demand is no longer driven by the data centre, it is driven by the power system required to sustain it.

It notes that aluminium dominates here, scaling across overhead transmission, conductors and utility-scale generation frameworks.

Copper scales across substations, underground connections and generation-side electrical systems.

“The split between the two metals is not a function of price. It is determined by the physical limits of each application. Physics defines outcomes. Price influences the boundaries,” says WoodMac.

When all three layers are aggregated, the research indicates that total system-level metals consumption reaches an estimated three to four times the volume implied within the asset.

The result, the report concludes, is not substitution between aluminium and copper, but co-dependent expansion across the base metals complex.