Copper in Use: Where Performance Delivers Sustainability.

Part of the CDA #ContinuousCopper Campaign — October 2025 — authored by Jessica Sanderson (Director, Sustainability amp; ESG)

Copper's story does not end at the factory gate. Its greatest contribution begins the moment it goes to work - inside buildings, power grids, and data centers. This is where performance, efficiency, and reliability determine how well critical systems operate. The energy saved, the risks avoided, and the lifespan extended all trace back to the properties that make copper unique. Every kilowatt-hour that moves efficiently through a cable, every gallon of water that flows cleanly through a pipe, and every data rack that stays cool under load, reflects a measurable advantage.

Choosing copper is not simply a materials decision – it's a sustainability strategy. Integrating copper into systems allows for lower operating emissions, greater reliability, and more resilient energy future.

Why the use phase matters

The choices made at installation can determine how a system performs for decades. A small difference in efficiency, even one percent, can compound into enormous losses when a system runs every hour of every day for years on end.

Efficiency:

Copper carries electricity and heat with unmatched efficiency. Its high conductivity means lower resistance, less heat loss, and reduced demand on cooling systems. Modeling based on recent CDA data shows that over a 30-year operating life, the difference between copper and alternative conductors can translate into tens of millions of kilowatt-hours saved in a single large data center.

Reliability and Durability:

Copper's strength and stability under heat and stress help systems stay secure. In electrical applications, copper maintains its clamping force at connections, resisting the loosening that often leads to hot spots, arcing, or failure. This single attribute dramatically reduces the need for retorquing and inspection, a key factor in reducing downtime and service costs in data centers and industrial facilities.

Resilience and Safety:

Copper gives systems the flexibility to adapt to future demand without sacrificing safety.

In data centers, where workloads are rapidly scaling due to artificial intelligence and cloud computing, copper delivers stable, efficient power to processors that operate at unprecedented densities. It also underpins the new generation of liquid cooling systems. From cold plates to distribution units and heat exchangers, copper keeps temperatures stable under extreme load.

Whether in a hospital, an office tower, or a hyperscale data facility, copper reduces risk and ensures continuous, safe operation – performance that is essential when downtime or overheating is simply not an option.

Operational impact vs production footprint:

A product's environmental value cannot be measured only by how it is made. It must also account for how it performs throughout its life. Systems that fail early or operate inefficiently carry what might be called a double impact – the cost of replacement and the cost of waste.

Sector Spotlights

Buildings – Efficiency You Can See and Measure

Modern buildings demand more from their mechanical systems – higher efficiency, better indoor quality, and lower environmental impact. In plumbing and HVAC systems, copper's performance is both measurable and visible. Heat exchangers with smaller-diameter copper tubes dissipate heat more efficiently, resulting in more compact designs that require less refrigerant and less energy to operate. Its impermeability prevents outside contaminants from entering the water supply, ensuring safety as well as performance.

Copper is also inherently fire-resistant and fully recyclable at the end of a building's life. Alternatives often degrade sooner, cannot be recycled at comparable rates, or require larger components to achieve similar flow and thermal performance, leading to higher energy use and higher lifecycle costs.

Power Grids – Delivering More with Less Loss

As electrification accelerates, today's power grids are under growing pressure to deliver more energy, more efficiently, to an expanding range of end uses. Copper's exceptional electrical conductivity reduces resistance losses in transmission and distribution, ensuring that a greater share of generated power reaches consumers. This efficiency not only lowers overall energy waste but also supports system reliability and stability across the grid.

While copper-based infrastructure requires a higher initial investment, analyses by S&P Global and modelling by the Copper Development Association (CDA) show that these costs are often recouped within just a few years through reduced line losses alone. Over a 30-year service life, the resulting efficiency gains compound, translating into major operational savings, lower lifecycle costs, and meaningful emissions reductions. These benefits align economic performance with environmental responsibility, strengthening the long-term value of investing in copper.

Data Centers – Built for constant performance

What began as rows of servers in office basements has evolved into vast, hyperscale campuses that power the digital economy. Inside these facilities, millions of servers depend on stable, efficient power and precise thermal management. Copper makes both possible.

High-conductivity copper in power cables, busways, and connectors ensures minimal voltage drop and steady current under high load. In cooling systems, copper's thermal performance supports the shift to liquid cooling technologies that can dissipate heat more effectively than air alone.

The EPD Gap and Policy Implications

Despite coppers proven in-use advantages, many lifecycle assessment and certification frameworks still fail to account for operational efficiency. Environmental Product Declarations, for example, often measure embodied carbon at the point of manufacture but exclude decades of energy savings that occur during use.

This creates a distortion in which lower cost, but less efficient materials appear more sustainable on paper. Updating standards to include the full lifecycle impact, including performance in use, would better reflect copper's true value. It would also align policy with proven results, rewarding materials that deliver measurable energy and carbon savings over time.

The Path Forward

Copper's role in the energy transition extends beyond production. It is an enabler of efficiency, safety, and reliability across the systems that keep modern life running. In the use phase, its benefits are not theoretical; they are operational, financial, and environmental.

For policymakers, the opportunity is to ensure that standards and incentives reflect lifecycle performance. For buyers and operators, the challenge is to look beyond upfront cost and recognize the long-term value of choosing materials that perform better, last longer, and waste less. For producers and associations, the imperative is to keep demonstrating copper's advantage with transparent data, measurable results, and credible case studies.

Every kilowatt-hour saved, every repair avoided, and every year of extended service tells the same story: copper delivers its greatest sustainability impact when it is put to work.