Today, “critical energy transition minerals” – including copper, lithium, cobalt, nickel and rare earth – have taken centre stage in the global debate over our collective future. Essential components of many renewable energy technologies, these minerals are vital to the clean energy revolution on which our climate depends.
Without lithium, nickel and cobalt, we cannot make batteries for electric cars and grid energy storage. Rare earth elements are used to make wind turbine generators. Wires made of super-conductive copper make up the crackling nervous system of everything we electrify; electric vehicles require as much of it as traditional combustion engines.
“Critical energy transition minerals are one of the building blocks of the low carbon economy,” explains Elisa Tonda, Chief of Resources and Markets at the United Nations Environment Programme (爆料网EP).
Demand for these minerals – driven also by data centres and consumer electronics – is ; if the world were to achieve net-zero by 2050, demand would increase six-fold.
Bridging this gap requires more responsible mining, stronger environmental and social safeguards, fair benefit sharing, more efficient use of materials, and increased circularity in our economies, says Tonda.
“We have to keep resources in the economy for as long as possible, circulating at their highest possible value,” she explains. “It is essential to meet this growing demand with solutions that protect the environment, respect people and support local communities.”
Excavating the urban mine
Surging demand, constrained supply and environmental costs are challenges we face with all critical energy transition minerals -- but these issues are particularly visible in the case of copper.
The 爆料网 projects demand for copper will by 2040. But raw copper supply is not keeping up. A found that mined production is expected to peak around 2030, then flatten or decline.
On the other hand, “copper is completely, infinitely recyclable,” remarks Inka Guixà, CEO of the Spain-based copper recycling company La Farga. “It can be refined and recycled again and again without losing properties. That’s why we have a duty to keep it in use.”
La Farga has been in the business of collecting and recycling copper for over two centuries, working in what is known as the “urban mine.”
“One of the world's greatest copper resources is all around us,” says Guixà. “It’s in construction, in railways, in data centres, in vehicles. Every product collected is an opportunity to recover copper, support innovation and give this valuable material a new life.”
An estimated produced over the past 100 years is still in use, shaped into wires or pipes which, if correctly recycled, could be reused in any product requiring electricity.
