The data centre and AI industries have exhibited significant growth and commercial interest over the past couple of years. CRU's Wire & Cable team has been tracking and modelling this sector and has recently expanded its long-term forecasting to cover metallic wire and cable and non-cable demand. This insight provides a brief breakdown of CRU's expanded coverage and data offerings on the data centre sector, which now includes long-term forecasting for non-cable products used inside data centre facilities and campuses, such as busbars and busway systems, electrical distribution components, and cooling systems.
Non-cable components such as busbars, switchgears and UPS systems require significant amounts of copper
This expanded data accounts for metallic demand outside of traditional cabling connections. Server rack busbars and overhead busways represent the busbar requirements for inside server racks and overhead distribution systems.
Switchgear and UPS systems carry a disproportionately large share of non-cable metallic demand, owing to the dense network of internal busbars required to distribute, condition and route power reliably across their internal architectures – a requirement that intensifies as data centres push toward higher power redundancy standards.
Chillers and heat exchange pumps also carry a meaningful metallic footprint driven by copper windings in pump motors, brass and bronze fittings, and aluminium or copper heat exchanger coils, which scale directly with the cooling capacity demanded by increasingly dense compute environments. As power densities per rack continue to rise, so too does the thermal load that these systems must manage, amplifying their contribution to overall metallic intensity per megawatt of installed IT capacity
Rack cooling systems, which encompass in-row and in-rack air conditioning units as well as direct l.iquid cooling via cold-plate technology, represent one of the fastest-growing components of non-cable metallic demand in modern data centre builds. Cold-plate systems in particular are notable for their use of copper manifolds, tubing and plate assemblies that sit in direct thermal contact with processors and accelerators.
As high-performance computing and AI workloads drive rack power densities well beyond the thresholds manageable by conventional air cooling, the adoption of cold-plate and immersion-adjacent architectures is accelerating. This brings structurally higher copper and aluminium intensity per rack unit compared to traditional air-cooled deployments.
Growing adoption of high-voltage designs to lower metallic intensities in the future
The next generation of AI-optimised server racks is pushing power consumption toward 1 MW per rack and beyond, rendering traditional low-voltage power distribution architectures increasingly unfit for purpose. At these power densities, low-voltage systems must carry extremely high currents to deliver the required power, necessitating thicker copper busbars and cables, generating greater heat and energy losses, and consuming physical space that would otherwise be occupied by compute and cooling hardware.
The solution lies in higher-voltage distribution. Shifting from a conventional 415V AC system to 800V DC, for example, reduces the current required to deliver the same power proportionally, cutting conductor sizing requirements significantly in the process. Industry analysis suggests this transition could reduce total copper requirements by around 45% while also delivering meaningful gains in energy efficiency, total cost of ownership, and long-term maintenance burden.
Beyond power distribution, next-generation server architectures are also increasingly moving toward optical-based networking interconnects, substituting traditional copper data cables with fibre optic alternatives. As AI workloads demand ever-higher intra-rack and inter-rack bandwidth, the signal integrity and latency advantages of optical connectivity make it a compelling replacement, representing a further structural headwind to copper intensity in the networking layer of future data centre builds.
Recent insights into these subjects are now available to readers to further understand these trends and transitions, including the rise of fibre optics in the data centre displacing copper interconnects and wider equipment efficiencies for power distribution across the data centre campus. Please get in touch to access the insights below:
1. Insight Series (Part 1): NPO, CPO and next-gen optical networking for data centres
2. Insight Series (Part 2): The outlook of copper-based data cables in AI data centres
3. Standalone Insight: Higher voltage, less copper: How 800V DC reshapes data centre metal demand
Data centre metals demand growth expected to mature by early 2030s
Looking ahead, as 800V direct current power distribution and optical-based data transmission becomes more widely adopted – particularly in new data centre builds – there will be meaningful long-term gains in material efficiency. There will also be a gradual reduction in the amount of metal required per unit of power delivered and processed across data centre campuses.
In our updated base case forecast, we expect combined total data centre metallic demand for total copper and aluminium-based cable and non-cable products to be at ~850–900 kt in 2026, representing ~25% y/y growth from 2025. In the near-term, we expected this demand to reach upwards of ~1,500 kt by 2030, representing a ~11% CAGR over the next several years.
In a bull case scenario, where data centre buildouts exceed base case assumptions and metallic thrifting effects are lower than expected, combined total data centre metallic demand is expected to reach ~1,100 kt conductors this year and up to ~1,900 kt conductors in 2030.
On the other hand, in a bear case view where data centre buildouts disappoint and metallic thrifting effects are much higher than anticipated, combined total data centre metallic demand is expected to reach closer to ~700 kt conductors and up to ~1,100 kt conductors in 2030. For both cases, in similar fashion to our base case forecast, we expect some softness in overall metallic demand from data centres begin to soften due to maturity of early buildout phases and metal efficiency gains.
Our forecast accounts for the wide range of possibilities from this market, as uncertainty around the longer-term growth of buildout rests on several factors. These include supply chain constraints on critical equipment (i.e. transformers and switchgears), grid interconnection delays and risks surrounding energy access, private capital investment slowdowns due to rising concerns on paybacks, local political pushback on data centre campus builds, and ultimately the transition toward widespread customer and enterprise adoption of AI models and systems.
Aluminium as share of total metal demand is expected to increase due to clear cost advantages
Another key trend over the long run within the data centre space is the expected substitution effect of operators utilizing aluminium-based solutions increasingly more than copper-based ones. As factors such as cost and lead time advantages start to become more paramount, aluminium is increasingly stepping in as an attractive option for producers.
Expectations are that while aluminium is gaining increasing market share across cabling and other distribution equipment components, copper will likely hold as the larger conductive material in demand terms over the long term.
The data centre sector remains one of the most consequential and fast-evolving sources of metallic demand in the global commodities landscape. As CRU continues to expand its coverage of this space, the picture that emerges is one of strong near-term demand growth, underpinned by an accelerating build-out of AI-optimised capacity, which is set against a longer-term backdrop of meaningful structural change.
Higher-voltage power distribution, optical networking and the gradual substitution of copper with aluminium across key product categories will collectively reshape the metallic intensity profile of data centres over the coming decade. The expanded forecasting framework, covering both cable and non-cable products across a range of scenarios, is positioned to help clients understand and anticipate these shifts as they unfold.
For those interested in learning more about our offerings, please reach out to CRU’s Wire & Cable team for further inquiries.
