Australia’s east coast has a wealth of energy sources, but a poverty of electricity being generated. The current energy crisis highlights the need for significantly more efficient power grids and supporting transmission infrastructure as the trend towards renewables continues to accelerate globally.

The NSW government acknowledged this last week with a $1.2 billion transmission investment that will unlock $14 billion of private sector projects. This trend is expected to significantly accelerate, meaning a lot more demand for copper, both now and in the upcoming decades.

The finger pointing over the last couple of weeks is understandable given the rising price of power and risk of the lights going off in parts of the east coast. This current scenario is a combination of several factors, many of which are a long time in the making but all of which will require significant amounts of new investment, a much more efficient electricity network and materially more copper demand to be resolved.