In 2015, the United Nations adopted the Paris Agreement to reduce fossil fuels and control global warming. The world is pushing electric vehicles and green energy, but this has unexpectedly led to a surge in copper prices. In 2021, Goldman Sachs published a report titled "Copper is the New Oil", alerting the public to this trend and the imbalance between supply and demand. Three years later, the AI wave has emerged, data centers have exploded, and copper prices have risen this year. Bank of America expects copper prices to rise again in 2026, and copper is still regarded as the "new oil" by analysts. Green industries drive up copper prices. Copper has a wide range of uses, high thermal and electrical conductivity, is easy to process, and is also a durable metal that is widely used in daily life. Therefore, it is often used to measure the global economic situation and is known as "Dr. Copper." In April 2021, a Goldman Sachs report pointed out that copper plays a key role if the world wants to achieve the Paris Agreement and reduce oil use. Copper is used in clean energy such as wind power, solar power and electric vehicles. Goldman Sachs warned that copper prices have risen by 80% in the past year as supply has not kept up with demand, showing that the market is not prepared enough. At that time, Goldman Sachs estimated that by 2030, demand for copper from green-related technologies would grow 6 to 9 times to 5.4 to 8.7 million tons. But in mid-2022, due to rising energy prices and pressure from rising interest rates, copper prices plummeted as people worried about an economic recession. Copper prices rose strongly in May this year, hitting an all-time high of US$11,104.5 per ton on May 20. One of the analysts who wrote the report is now working for Carlyle Group.
