The energy transition is starting to feed itself: Maguire
By Gavin Maguire
LITTLETON, Colorado, Oct 2 (Reuters) - The shift toward electric vehicles, renewables, battery storage and expanded power grids is driving a surge in demand for copper, rare earths, silver and other materials. But the electrification push is starting to create its own supply, too.
According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), clean energy technologies require far larger quantities of minerals than conventional energy systems, and demand linked to the energy transition is only set to grow over the coming decades.
That accelerating demand contrasts with a supply outlook for key materials which is constrained by new mines, refining capacity and processing infrastructure that can take years to develop.
That conundrum is forcing governments and companies to rethink where future supplies will come from.
An increasingly viable source of new supply is coming from an unexpected source: energy-transition infrastructure itself.
Around the world, breakthroughs in recycling are turning old batteries, retired solar panels, decommissioned wind turbines and aging grid equipment into increasingly valuable sources of the same materials needed to sustain energy-transition momentum.
What began as a waste-management challenge is evolving into a strategic industrial opportunity, as legacy energy-transition components become a resource base in their own right.
BATTERY BASE
Batteries offer the clearest example of the growing importance of recycling to the supply picture.
For years, concerns about future battery supply focused on the availability of lithium, nickel, cobalt and graphite from mines.
But attention is now shifting toward recovering those same materials from batteries already in circulation.
US company Redwood Materials says it recovers more than 95% of lithium, nickel, cobalt and copper from spent batteries and manufacturing scrap.
The company processes more than 20 gigawatt-hours of lithium-ion batteries annually and produces more than 60,000 metric tons of critical materials each year.
It describes those recovered materials as a growing domestic source of supply that can reduce dependence on new mining and imports.
With the first generation of large-scale EV batteries now reaching maturity, the volume of available batteries should continue to climb. This, in turn, may encourage more widespread recycling that can reduce demand for fresh battery components.
The impact on global supply could be meaningful. Between 20% and 30% of global lithium, nickel and cobalt demand could come from stepped-up recycling efforts by 2050, according to the IEA.
In Europe, which has some of the world's most ambitious materials recycling policies, researchers have estimated that roughly 15% of lithium, nickel and manganese and around 25% of cobalt supplies could come from recycling sources by 2030.
SOLAR'S OWN WASTE STREAM
Solar energy faces a similar opportunity.
The industry is adding generating capacity at record rates, but is also consuming large quantities of silver, silicon and other materials to manufacture arrays.
Recycling efforts have so far focused mainly on recovering glass and aluminium from retired panels; other materials have often remained difficult or uneconomic to recover.
But a series of recent technological breakthroughs is improving the economics of solar-panel recycling, allowing valuable materials such as silver and silicon to be recovered more efficiently.
Researchers at the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research (TNO) recently demonstrated a laser-assisted recycling process capable of recovering silicon with purity levels of up to 99.998% and silver with purity of 99.7%, while achieving recovery yields of roughly 97%.
In Australia, researchers at the University of Newcastle have demonstrated nearly 100% silver recovery from end-of-life solar panels using flotation techniques already familiar to the mining industry that are commercially scalable.
Such high recovery rates of some of the most sought-after components of solar arrays have the potential to elevate solar recycling from a side hustle into a lucrative industry.
Indeed, energy consultants at Rystad Energy estimate that the total value of recyclable materials from solar panels could rise from around $2 billion currently to roughly $80 billion by 2050 given the scale of global deployment of solar systems and the expected increase in materials prices.
By 2035, as much as 8% of the polysilicon, 11% of the aluminum, 2% of the copper and 21% of the silver needed for solar panel production could come from recycling panels installed in 2020, according to Rystad research.
Future solar deployment may therefore increasingly not need to draw on newly produced silver and silicon but instead look to materials harvested from earlier generations of solar farms.
WIND TURBINES FEEDING THE CEMENT SECTOR
Wind power is experiencing its own recycling breakthrough.
A wind turbine can already be substantially recycled, but the blades have long represented a technical challenge because of the composite materials used in their construction.
However, recent advances suggest a solution is coming into view that could emerge as a boon for cement makers and construction firms looking to reduce their own carbon footprints.
French multinational Veolia VIE.PA has developed a process that shreds previously unrecyclable fibreglass blades into pellets that can replace coal, silica and limestone in cement kilns.
US company REGEN Fiber applies a similar process to create reinforcement fibers for the concrete, asphalt and composite industries.
While the output of these processes does not produce inputs for the renewable energy industry itself, the recycled materials can displace significant volumes of virgin raw materials in the cement and construction sectors.
An analysis by Quantis US, an environmental consulting firm, found that feeding a shredded 7-metric-ton blade into a cement kiln reduces coal use by 5 tons while avoiding 2.7 tons of silica, 1.9 tons of limestone and nearly 1 ton of additional minerals.
In turn, recycled turbine blades can reduce demand for energy-intensive mining, quarrying and materials processing, lowering the overall resource and emissions footprint of the energy transition.
GRID MINING
One of the least discussed recycling opportunities lies within the power grid itself.
Countries are embarking on massive grid-expansion programs to accelerate renewables generation, electrify transportation and support rising electricity demand. Those investments require enormous quantities of copper, aluminium and steel.
Much of the discussion around these plans focuses on where those materials will come from, overlooking the vast stocks already embedded within aging infrastructure.
Utilities are replacing transformers, substations and transmission equipment that in many cases contain large volumes of high-quality copper, aluminium, steel and other key components.
Recycling programs are increasingly recovering these materials and returning them to industrial supply chains.
US steelmaker Nucor NUE.N operates specialized recovery facilities that process retired equipment to double their volume of reclaimed copper and non-ferrous metals, which are used in the construction of new transmission components.
That opportunity will grow as grid modernization accelerates. Every retired transformer and transmission asset represents a concentrated source of refined materials that can be redeployed into the next generation of electricity infrastructure.
FEEDING ITSELF
The common theme across batteries, solar panels, wind turbines and grid equipment is that the energy transition is creating its own expanding inventory of recoverable materials.
Mining will remain indispensable, of course. Global demand growth remains too large for recycling alone to meet.
But the industry is increasingly discovering that future supply does not depend exclusively on what can be extracted from the ground.
As concerns grow over critical-mineral shortages and supply-chain security, the most important new mine of the energy-transition era may prove to be the one that has already been built.
(The opinions expressed here are those of the author, a columnist for Reuters.)
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