Question to the Department for Energy Security & Net Zero:

To ask the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, what estimate his Department has made of the amount of (a) copper, (b) aluminium, (c) steel, (d) concrete and (e) other metals required to upgrade the electricity (i) transmission and (ii) distribution grids over the next five years.

Grid expansion will be dependent on equipment manufacturers securing the materials required to produce grid components to meet global demand. The UK Critical Mineral Intelligence Centre (CMIC) recently published a study into requirements of our national grid infrastructure to reach net zero. The cumulative material demand between 2023-2050 for upgrades is expected to be between 1.1m-1.6m tonnes of copper and 200,000-300,000 tonnes of aluminium.

As part of the Government’s upcoming Plan for Steel, we are working to better understand domestic demand and explore what can be done to ensure our steel sector is best positioned to capitalise on it.