A wire maker bets 500 million dollars on rising demand
Copper wire demand from electric grids and EV chargers is the reason Encore Wire, a Prysmian brand, is spending 500 million dollars over 5 years to build a new cable plant at its Texas campus. Prysmian own press release announcing the investment names the reason as growing electrification demand and the strengthening of the power grid. The company reports 249 million dollars of that total was already approved by its board in March 2025, and expects the more than 650,000 square foot facility online in 2027, adding up to 120 jobs. The press release itself never once uses the word copper, though Encore Wire, on its own company history page, calls itself a leading manufacturer of copper and aluminum building wire, and has run its own copper rod mill since 1998, turning raw copper into wire on site.
Copper wire demand from electric grids and EV chargers
Two forces sit behind that bet. Wood Mackenzie, a commodity research firm, projects total global copper demand will rise 24% by 2035, an increase of 8.2 million metric tons a year to 42.7 million metric tons a year. Copper tied to the energy transition sector, renewable power, electric vehicles and grid equipment together, is projected to climb from 1.7 million metric tons a year today to 4.3 million metric tons a year by 2035. Electric vehicle related copper demand alone is set to double by 2035.
Each electric vehicle contains up to four times more copper than a conventional car.
Peter Schmitz, director, global markets research, Wood Mackenzie. Source 3.
Energy transition sector figures cover renewable power, electric vehicles and grid equipment combined, Wood Mackenzie own grouping. The current total, 34.5 million metric tons a year, is a MAOWCE derivation, the 2035 total of 42.7 million minus Wood Mackenzie own stated increase of 8.2 million. The source states current figures as of its October 2025 report rather than printing a specific year against them.
Show the numbers
| Energy transition, current | 1.7 |
| Energy transition, 2035 | 4.3 |
| Total demand, current | 34.5 |
| Total demand, 2035 | 42.7 |
The vehicles need somewhere to plug in. The International Energy Agency counts more than 7 million public electric vehicle charging points worldwide at the end of 2025, after nearly 1.8 million were added in a single year, a 33% increase. China added more than 75% of that growth, its own network reaching about 4.7 million points by the end of 2025. The agency states that grid connection is already a limit on the buildout, warning that long permitting procedures and network reinforcements can delay a charging depot by several years.
The United States is left out of this chart. The International Energy Agency states the United States count only for fast and ultra fast charging points, nearly 70,000, a narrower measure than the total public point counts shown here, so including it would misstate the comparison.
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| China | 4.7 |
| Netherlands | 0.21 |
| Germany | 0.196 |
| France | 0.185 |
Copper has become the strategic bottleneck of the global energy transition.
Charles Cooper, research director, head of copper research, Wood Mackenzie. Source 3.
Utilities are waiting years for the same wire
United States electric utilities now spend more than 200 billion dollars a year on capital investment, up 42% since 2020, and spending on the distribution system, the local wires and equipment that reach a customer rather than the long haul transmission grid, has nearly doubled over that same period. CoBank, a bank that lends to the utility sector, reports that in 2025, 87% of the 104 billion dollars utilities spent on distribution went to just 4 categories, poles and fixtures, conductors, meaning the wire itself that carries the current, transformers and station equipment. Equipment lead times that used to run under a year now stretch to 3 or 4 years, and S and P Global, the Edison Electric Institute and Deloitte all expect total utility capital spending to top 1 trillion dollars over the next 5 years.
Four separate counts point at 1 mechanism
A wire manufacturer own investment, a market forecaster demand model, an international agency count of chargers and a bank read on utility spending are 4 independent signals pointing at the same mechanism, not 4 separate stories. Each measures a different part of the same rebuild, the factory that makes the wire, the vehicles that need it, the chargers they plug into, and the grid equipment utilities cannot buy fast enough.