Ma Long's recycling company is reaping profits from exhausted lithium-ion batteries. Pricey components such as lithium – a silvery-white alkali metal aptly nicknamed “white gold” – along with other materials such as cobalt and nickel, hold their value beyond the life of the batteries powering China’s massive electric-vehicle (EV) industry. “There is huge potential in the business of new-energy waste, because new energy is where China and the world are going,” said the sales manager at a subsidiary of Henan Hairui Intelligent Technology in Zhengzhou, Henan province. Speaking at a recent trade fair for environmental technologies in Shanghai, Ma said 70% of his company’s business is dedicated to machines for recycling batteries and solar panels. As more and more batteries and solar panels reach the end of their life cycle in China – a global leader in renewable-energy deployment – Chinese businesses like Ma’s are embracing a circular economy, where materials are reused and reintroduced into new products, reducing waste and conserving resources. With valuable metals used in many of today’s fast-growing, clean-energy technologies, the cycle is especially meaningful to improve China’s mineral independence as it navigates intensifying global trade tensions.
“The recycling of minerals is largely for the sake of resource security,” said Du Huanzheng, Professor specializing in the circular economy at Shanghai’s Tongji University. “China is also seeking new economic growth by strengthening recycling efforts, which, in the past, were more driven by the need to solve pollution issues,” he said. The large-scale equipment upgrades and trade-in of consumer goods, two initiatives launched a year ago to boost domestic demand in a slowing Chinese economy, have pushed up demand for recycling and represent the potential for a new round of economic growth, he said. The China Resources Recycling Group was set up – directly under the State Council, China's central government – to build an offline resource recycling network covering waste ranging from durable consumer goods, such as electronic products, to retired wind power and photovoltaic equipment. After about a decade of rapid growth in the use of EVs, whose battery life is set at an upper limit of eight years, China has already started seeing the large-scale retirement of car batteries.
The weight of retired car batteries in China is expected to exceed 4 million tons a year by 2028, and the annual output value of the waste-battery-recycling industry will be more than CNY280 billion, according to estimates of the China Electronics Energy Saving Technology Association. Meanwhile, with their longer service life but having been deployed earlier, photovoltaic modules from China’s vast solar power system are expected to begin retiring this year, and that retirement wave will intensify over the next half-decade. Unlike fossil fuels, which are gone once burned, the metals in these new-energy products can be recycled, and this is of critical importance amid a worsening trade war between China and the United States, said a Beijing-based professor of environmental economics who declined to be named as he was not authorized to talk to the media. “While China is intensifying efforts in looking for mines of critical minerals domestically, it is facing more difficulties in buying from allies of the U.S., such as Australia and Canada. “Business with other mineral suppliers, such as Congo and Chile, may also be affected as the administration of Donald Trump pressures trading partners to isolate China,” he added.
China relies heavily on imports for many key minerals, especially those for new-energy and high-end manufacturing, such as cobalt, nickel and lithium. On the other hand, the U.S. and Europe are also warning against their dependence on China, as most of the intermediate links of refining and finished products are controlled by the latter.
China’s ongoing campaign for renewals of consumer goods and upgrades of equipment is expected to add nearly 500,000 tons of resources that can recover non-ferrous metals, Li Yusheng, Deputy Secretary General of the China Nonferrous Metals Industry Association, said at a press conference in January. As leading battery manufacturers and carmakers, such as Contemporary Amperex Technology (CATL) and BYD, have been perfecting their battery recycling in recent years, smaller businesses are also flocking to this potential market in hopes of carving out a piece of the pie. Yu Zhongkai, Senior Manager with Tianli Technology, a recycling-machine maker in Zhejiang province, said the company started developing battery-recycling equipment not long ago and now has a quarter of its business coming from this field. “But we’re still experimenting, because there are no industry-wide standards yet, and the market is still unclear,” he said.
China is still in its infancy in recycling new-energy waste, but the practice is not particularly advanced anywhere in the world, noted the Beijing professor. The European Union leads in recycling standards and systems, and China enjoys the incomparable advantage of a complete industrial chain and a large-scale market, he noted. Du, the Shanghai professor, noted that it is an emerging sector that has attracted many investors but lacks regulation and technological breakthroughs. “Businesses are showing great enthusiasm, but large-scale recycling has yet to come, and a mature recycling system has yet to be formed,” he said. China currently adopts a white-list policy to standardize the battery-recycling market and avoid safety accidents and environmental pollution. A total of 156 companies have been selected so far for the list, the South China Morning Post reports.
