An announced power project is not electricity being used

themePublished 19 October 20262 min readequities, commodities

Key points

• A proposal, an approval, a financing and an operating connection are four different facts.
• The IEA's 2026 critical-minerals outlook says copper accounts for around 10 to 15 percent of transformer and power-cable prices. That is a cost share, not a demand forecast for data centres.
• No data-centre electricity total is stated, because no grid or EIA table was read.

What is going on

The executive summary of the IEA Global Critical Minerals Outlook 2026, published as a report dated 16 July 2026, says copper represents around 10 to 15 percent of transformer and power-cable prices. Transformers and cables are the equipment a new load has to wait for. The same summary discusses grid-relevant minerals and smelting. It is not an electricity-demand report, and this desk did not open a separate IEA electricity outlook or a US Energy Information Administration table. Any electricity-demand total would be invented. It is left out.

Why it matters

The investable question is who waits, and who gets paid while waiting. A generator can have spare capacity that a customer still cannot reach, if the line or the transformer is the constraint. An equipment supplier can have a full order book and a factory that cannot hire or source grain-oriented steel fast enough to convert the book into deliveries. A landlord of a computing campus can announce a load that the utility has not studied. Revenue, in each case, follows a different date from the announcement.

What to watch

A later edition should cite, for a named region, interconnection requests, approved connections, and energy actually metered. Those three series diverge. Until they are cited, the only equipment fact on this page is the IEA's cost share for copper inside transformers and cables. Lead times, permitting queues and financing terms belong in the primary document that states them.

Risks

Equipment shortages can ease, and a queue can include projects that will never be built. Treating the queue as future sales double-counts hope. Power prices can rise enough to move the computing load somewhere else, or to push the operator toward a different design. This note does not claim that any utility, turbine maker or landlord earns an attractive return.

Four stages that are not synonyms

Announced means someone said the project exists. Approved means a regulator or a utility process has said it may proceed. Funded means the capital is committed, which is still not the same as spent. Operating means electrons are being delivered under a contract that is in force. A thematic slide that adds these stages together is adding different verbs.