The world will need to build approximately 16.1 million tonnes per year of new copper mine output by 2050, at a cost of about $360 billion in 2024, according to a Payne Institute for Public Policy paper published on October 26, 2026.

The research, authored by Morgan Bazilian, Adam Simon, Macdonald Amoah, Andrew Pederson and Maxwell Brown, converts the physical copper supply gap into a capital requirement. It finds that business-as-usual demand for mined copper will reach 37.1 million tonnes per year by 2050, while mines operating in 2018 will supply only 17.8 million tonnes of that total as they deplete and close.

Mines opened or expanded since 2018 have added about 3.2 million tonnes, leaving 16.1 million tonnes per year still to be built — more than two-thirds of the 23.5 million tonnes the world mined in 2025, according to World Bureau of Metal Statistics data cited in the paper.

Priced at the $22,359 per tonne average capital intensity of the 26 copper projects due to start by 2030, the 16.1 million tonnes costs about $360 billion. The full range, given various sensitivities, runs from $304 billion to about $545 billion. The low end prices new mines at the cheapest benchmark project cost; the high end assumes real building costs keep rising at 3.4% to 3.6% per year.

Across the paper's demand scenarios, the bill runs from $280 billion — if leaching tailings and stockpiles supplies 4 million tonnes per year at $2,500 per tonne — to $552 billion under full vehicle electrification with grid expansion.

The Payne Institute's baseline figure sits above BloombergNEF's estimate of $332 billion, published in its Transition Metals Outlook 2026 on October 20. The Payne authors note that BloombergNEF's figure rests on a physical gap close to theirs but on a capital intensity 26% below the pipeline average, placing it slightly below the low end of what they calculated.

BloombergNEF forecasts a copper supply deficit beginning in 2028 and widening to as much as 20 million metric tons by 2050 — equivalent to 44% of projected global demand.

Global copper demand is expected to jump by 61% between 2026 and 2050, reaching nearly 46 million tons, with demand for electrified transport alone soaring by 244% to 11.4 million tons.

The Payne Institute identifies falling ore grades and deeper ore bodies as key drivers of the investment gap. As mines age, average copper content declines, requiring operators to move and process more rock to produce the same amount of metal — a dynamic that raises capital and operating costs. Leaching copper from existing stockpiles and tailings may be able to lower the overall figure.

While the annual requirement of $14 billion to $18 billion is within the industry's recent spending, the paper warns that maintaining that momentum faces significant constraints: permitting, community consent, capital costs and a price that justifies the marginal project.

BloombergNEF separately notes that even with the necessary investment, bringing new mines into operation takes an average of 17 years, meaning the shortfall could persist for decades.

The findings underscore a structural challenge for the global energy transition. Copper is essential for power grids, renewable energy infrastructure, electric vehicles and data centres. While BloombergNEF finds that nine of the ten key energy transition metals it studies are on track to have sufficient supply capacity through 2050, copper remains the exception. The shortfall, the research provider warns, could push up prices, force manufacturers to use alternative materials and slow the deployment of electric vehicles, batteries and electricity grids.

The Payne Institute paper's central message is that the physical gap is large but not insurmountable — the capital required is within historical spending levels. The harder problem is the set of non-financial constraints, from permitting timelines to community engagement, that determine whether that capital can be deployed in time to build the mines the world will need.