More Than Ore: The Pivotal Role Recycled Copper Can Play in the Energy Transition

Copper is one of the most crucial minerals needed to drive the clean energy transition, and a faster transition could push copper demand beyond current production capacity. One way to overcome this challenge is by recycling.

Copper - that reddish-brown soft metal found in everything from electronics to cookware - is needed for all renewable energy technologies, including wind, solar and energy storage, as well as the grid infrastructure required to integrate it all.

Under the International Energy Agency's Net Zero Emission by 2050 Scenario, 50% of copper demand will be dedicated to clean energy technologies by 2040 and the overall global demand is projected to grow by at least 50% by 2050.

Power systems supported by renewable energy sources may use six to 12 times more copper than a fossil-fuel-based power system. Copper is also necessary for electric vehicles, which require at least two to three times more copper than traditional gas vehicles.

Significantly increasing copper mining in the short term faces several challenges, including long development lead times for deeper mines, permitting delays for new mines and decreasing ore quality from existing mines requiring a higher energy and water consumption per mass of copper extracted.

Here, we explore copper's significance and how recycling it - especially at a product's end of life - can help sustainably increase the supplies for a clean energy future.

Why Copper Matters

Copper has helped shape human development over thousands of years. Historically, it's been used for decorative items and tools. Today, it plays a vital and versatile role in a wide range of industrial applications due to its exceptional and unique properties, such as its flexibility, conductivity and resistance to corrosion.

Copper is the second-best electrical conductor after silver, making it indispensable in the power sector for wiring transmission. Copper's high conductivity significantly reduces resistance in electricity transmission, minimizing energy losses that would otherwise be converted to heat and helping to lower associated carbon emissions.

Nearly 70% of the copper used worldwide is dedicated to electrical conductivity and communication purposes. In addition, copper's excellent thermal conductivity and strong corrosion resistance make it highly valuable in the construction and building sectors, where it can be found in long-term applications such as plumbing, heat exchangers and radiators.

Copper wiring is used in the production of a wind turbine in India. Photo by Joerg Boethling / Alamy Stock Photo.

Copper is also highly malleable (it can be hammered or pressed without breaking or cracking) and its ductility (the ability to change shape without losing its strength) makes it ideal for manufacturing intricate or small components, such as fine wires in computers or smartphones. Furthermore, copper's natural antimicrobial properties allow it to kill bacteria and viruses on contact, making it valuable in the health care industry for copper-coated medical devices that reduce the spread of infections. Copper can also be combined with different elements to form alloys like brass and bronze, found in many applications such as valves, fittings, bearings, bushings, industrial machinery components, as well as Olympic bronze medals, jewelry and fine art.

Overall, copper is widely used across various sectors worldwide: 44% in power generation and transmission, 20% in construction and buildings, 14% in electrical equipment and electronic devices, 12% in vehicles and the transportation sector and 10% in other consumer goods such as coins, sculptures, jewelry, musical instruments and cookware, according to the International Copper Association (ICA).

As a backbone of both modern life and the global energy transition, every opportunity to source copper matters. In addition to opening new mines and extending the life of existing mines, recycling copper from products at their end of life is another important yet often overlooked source.

The Potential of Recycling End-of-Life Copper

Recycled copper includes copper from both manufacturing processes (pre-consumer or new scrap) and end-of-life products (post-consumer or old scrap) that have reached the end of their useful lifecycle. Copper's remarkable property of being 100% recyclable without losing its inherent properties makes it a highly viable supplement to mining new copper.

Copper produced from recycled materials can save up to 85% of the energy needed for mining and extraction. While the exact quantity of energy and greenhouse gas savings depends on how it's recycled and the quality of secondary input materials, recycling copper can significantly reduce air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions across the entire supply chain.

End-of-life consumer products, like this broken computer power supply box, includes copper wiring among its components. Photo by KPixMining / Alamy Stock Photo.

Currently, recycled copper accounts for about one-third of the world's copper supply. While it can't completely replace primary copper production from mining, recycled copper can serve as a critical supply buffer, helping to mitigate potential market tightness or price shocks. The greatest recycling opportunities will come from products at their end of life like electronic waste (or e-waste), which is the world's fastest-growing waste stream at 62 million tons a year.

Some regions are already showing initiatives. For example, in the European Union, the End-of-Life Vehicles Directive mandates that all end-of-life vehicles achieve a minimum of 95% recovery and 85% recycling based on their average weight, including materials such as copper. In the U.S., many recycling initiatives are driven by procurement specifications set by government agencies and companies that encourage the recovery and reuse of materials like copper. Additionally, various state and federal programs help foster a growing market for recycled copper and other metals.

In China, the government recently established the China Resource Recycling Group to improve nationwide recycling efforts of metals, including copper from end-of-life vehicles, home appliances, electronic waste, solar panels and wind turbines.

Modeling simulations from Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers show that recycled copper, particularly from end-of-life products, can play an increasingly essential role in helping meet the growing demand of what will be needed by mid-century. By integrating advanced processing technologies with significantly improved recycling rates, around two-thirds of newly available end-of-life copper scrap could be recovered and recycled by 2040. This would enable the additional recovery of over 6 million tons of copper from landfills each year - equivalent to more than 16 Empire State Buildings made entirely of copper and 30% more than the total copper production in 2023 from the world's 10 largest copper mines.

However, to fully harness the potential of end-of-life copper to meet the growing copper demand, the global end-of-life copper recycling rates will need to double from the current levels at 32% to 66%.

Copper Recycling's Complex Challenges

Copper recycling is a complex process with multiple steps such as collection, sorting, smelting and refining, and deploying diverse technologies and practices tailored to different waste streams. Taking e-waste as an example, the small amount of copper used in electronic devices might require more effort to recycle than other products.

In addition, recent policy changes have significantly impacted the copper scrap recycling market and global trade. For example, the Chinese government implemented a solid waste import ban in 2017, which would make it difficult for the country to process low-grade scrap sources for recycled copper. Previously, many developed countries, including the U.S., the United Kingdom and Japan, had exported low-grade copper scrap to China. In March 2023, the EU considered copper a critical and strategic raw material for the first time. This signals an acknowledgement of the need to secure copper supply for the EU's transition to climate neutrality as global copper demand grows and is likely to increase pressure to keep more copper scrap in the EU. As a result, international trade in copper scrap is expected to decline. To make up for this deficit, countries will need to recycle copper domestically or regionally.

Currently, the U.S., Europe and China dominate global end-of-life copper volume, collectively accounting for about 60% of the collectible end-of-life copper and nearly 80% of the global copper scrap market by annual revenue. However, these regions face different bottlenecks to scale up their recycling efforts.

In the U.S., a major bottleneck is the lack of smelting and refinery capacity, especially for end-of-life copper, although this is changing with more facilities coming online or in development. In Europe, the largest challenge for copper recycling operations arises from regulatory hurdles that make it difficult to ship scrap from one EU country to another, high operational and energy costs and a conservative business environment that restricts growth. This challenge is further aggravated by the trade-off between increasing the recycling of lower-grade scrap and reducing carbon dioxide emissions to achieve the EU's ambitious climate goals. This is because emissions may come from the plastic in e-waste that can't be separated prior to smelting.

In China, government policies such as subsidies and incentives largely shape recycling practices. China needs a more resilient policy framework to build a more robust copper recycling market, especially by increasing domestic copper scrap supply since governmental subsidies are crucial to making the market economically viable. However, policies promoting long-term market health may lead to short-term market adjustments, as recyclers temporarily choose to hold copper scrap in their inventories, creating supply fluctuations.

What's Needed to Scale Recycled Copper?

Scaling recycled copper is not just a technical challenge. It requires a solid copper recycling market based on a circular economy.

To increase the end-of-life copper recycling rate in an environmentally and socially responsible way, the following is needed:

• A reliable and steady supply of feedstock in various grades by collecting copper scraps from end-of-life products and transporting them to processing facilities. Consumer groups, brands, retailers, logistics companies, municipalities and NGOs need to work together to raise public awareness and develop effective take-back/bring-back systems to increase the collection of end-of-life products. Public authorities and standardization organizations can seek transportation solutions for collected feedstock for recycling.
• High-standard processing capacity using advanced technologies is needed to transform copper scrap into recycled copper materials in each recycling step. Governments and the private sector must collaborate on policy frameworks and incentives to help accelerate and expand capacity with high technical, environmental, and social standards, especially for lower-grade copper. Civil society can support the industry with ESG performance and local community engagement for knowledge sharing and best practices.
• Strong market demand for recycled copper from downstream semi-fabricators and manufacturers can help drive the adoption of recycled copper as a sustainable material alternative to manufacturing. Many industrial applications do not need the highest purity of recycled copper if copper scraps can be sorted and refined properly and efficiently. Matching applications with "pure enough" recycled copper can avoid unnecessary processing steps, reducing recycling costs and lowering carbon and other environmental footprints. Copper recyclers, semi-fabricators and end-use industries need to work together to increase awareness of the benefits of using recycled copper and to understand and align on purity needs to unlock market potential for recycled copper from end-of-life scrap.

Building such a robust copper recycling market, unlocking the potential of circular copper supply chains through innovative business models and embedding circularity in our economy are essential steps to improve end-of-life copper recycling practices.

Substantially increasing copper recycling will complement copper from mining and support the supply of minerals needed by the energy transition. Improvements in collection, transport and recycling economics can directly benefit the recovery of other critical minerals (e.g. cobalt, rare-earth elements) today, as well as emerging end-of-life clean energy products such as EV batteries and solar panels, which will reach significant volumes in the coming decade.

Experts from the International Copper Association and Massachusetts Institute of Technology contributed information to this report.