The future is electric: Hot metals are exposing the fossil fuel fantasy
Drill, baby, drill: The arrival of the revanchist Trump administration was seen by the carbon industry as an opportunity to demonstrate fossil fuels’ indispensability to the world. It didn’t work out that way.
Opinion
By David Fickling and Ruth Pollard
December 31, 2025 — 5.45am
The past year began with a promise from President Donald Trump to deliver a future of “peace through strength” by unleashing America’s fossil fuel supplies.
To judge by the direction of commodity prices, the opposite is happening. That’s because the hottest metals as the year ends are the ones most indelibly associated with the mass electrification that is making coal, oil and gas increasingly redundant across the world.
The arrival of the revanchist Trump administration was seen as an opportunity to demonstrate fossil fuels’ indispensability to the world. It didn’t work out that way.Credit: Bloomberg
Silver pushed north of $US80 a troy ounce for the first time in history this week, capping a rise of 18 per cent over the past week. Copper also hit a record, with a 6.3 per cent gain taking it as high as $US5.92 a pound.
The two metals are indispensable for electrical systems. Every wire, cable, motor and motherboard in your house contains copper, the best reasonably affordable electrical conductor. Many of them also carry a smaller amount of silver, the most effective conductor of all but one whose high prices typically confine it to thin films printed onto key contact points.
The solar industry, in particular, has become a key silver consumer, using about a fifth of the world’s supply. Electric vehicles comprise a small but fast-growing share of the total: Each one uses about 70 per cent more silver and three times more copper than a conventional internal combustion engine car. Add in the demand from AI chips and stagnating supply from mines that in many cases have been dug for centuries, and it’s little surprise that prices for electrical metals are surging.
Loading
It’s perfectly possible to give a fossil-fuel-favouring spin to this electrical revolution. While power generation from coal is in terminal decline, it still produces almost as much power as renewables do. Gas-fired electricity is only really on the rise in the US, Saudi Arabia and Iran, but the growth there has been significant, and may yet continue thanks to the rollout of data centres and air conditioning and the closure of oil-fired power stations. Even oil could benefit if all that extra copper and silver ends up going into hybrid rather than battery-only cars.