Skip to main content

Urban mining is not a solution for electric vehicle mineral demand

Fully Charged Show illustrates that the global electronic waste is an opportunity for EV minerals.

"We produce over $62,5 billion of electric waste each year."

Let me explain why urban mining is important but insignificant in terms of EV deployment.💡

Link to the Fully Charged Show post.

First of all, we do produce quite a staggering amount of electronic devices every year. 

Around 1400 million smart phones, 160 milloin tablets, 210 million laptops, and 800 million e-cigarettes. 2,6 billion in total.

All of them should be recycled at the end of their lifetime.


@AidanRGallagher offers a solution: "Circular economy. We should make sure that we’re getting our resources to build these devices from previous devices." 

So, how far towards the circular economy can we get if we recycled all the e-device battery minerals?

Aidan Gallagher's interview

Most of the batteries outside EVs are used for these four product categories.

We can estimate the battery demand of each category using a benchmark product, which is right on the money with the IEA estimate.

Last year around 27,4 GWh were used.


At the same time EV and mineral demand is growing multiple times faster. In the name of circularity & sustainability let's use an optimistic: IEA's new net zero scenario for EVs.

Here's the EV deployment and projected linear EV demand for the next seven years.


Assuming 1, 4, 6 and 7 year lifetime for e-cigarettes, smart phones, tablets and laptops respectively & 100% recovery rate (much lower in reality) the recycled material amount can barely keep up with the new e-device demand.

How can it possibly be a solution for other devices?

The short answer is of course that it can't.

Even if we were to use e-device battery waste for EV's, it can provide only 0,8% of our battery material need for EVs by 2030.

96,5% of the raw materials have to come from primary resources. That is mining and refining.

The reason behind this is simple as illustrated before with the immense difference in demand projections. 

29 GWh e-waste amount is enough for around 400 thousand EVs. Important but insignificant.

“One person's trash is another’s treasure” but the treasure is nowhere big enough to empower the EV deployment or the sustainable and circular economy.

Most of the building blocks for the circular economy must come from primary mineral resources.

Let's not get ahead of ourselves.

Visa Siekkinen
15.10.2023

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

USGS mineral commodity summary 2023

USGS mineral commodity summary 2023 is out. Here’s a short take from to critical mineral output & reserve growth. TLDR: Mine production is growing but the reserve growth is far exceeding the demand. We are not running out of minerals. Best performer: Lithium 🏆 Li reserves are up by 4,0 Mt from last year, which would be plenty for the the whole decade worth of demand if needed. EV barometer: Annual reserve growth would be enough for more than 500 million EVs. Current identified resources are 98 Mt. Other minerals: Cobalt reserves are up 0,7 Mt which is a solid growth from last year. EV barometer: Annual reserve growth would be enough for more than 125 million EVs (NMC 811). Co mine production rose from 165 kt to 190 kt. Copper reserves are up 10 Mt which was also similar growth to last year. Copper obviously has many application, but from EVs perspective the annual reserve growth would be enough for more than 430 million EVs. Graphite reserves are up 10 Mt and Nicke...
Post a Comment
Read more