EV battery recycling becomes big business in China
One man's waste is Ma Long's treasure.
And in the new-energy era, his map leads to exhausted lithium-ion batteries – veritable troves of reusable resources that are supercharging profits at Ma's company, a maker of solid-waste-recycling equipment in central China.
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 per cent 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.
And with valuable metals comprising essential components in many of today's fast-growing, clean-energy technologies, the cycle is especially meaningful in terms of improving China's mineral independence as it navigates intensifying global trade tensions, according to some analysts.'The recycling of minerals is largely for the sake of resource security,' said Du Huanzheng, a professor specialising in 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.In response to that rising demand, a new state-owned giant was created directly under the State Council last year.
The China Resources Recycling Group aims 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, according to an official announcement in October.
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', according to an official readout of a State Council meeting in February.
The weight of retired car batteries in China is expected to exceed 4 million tonnes a year by 2028, and the annual output value of the waste-battery-recycling industry will be more than 280 billion yuan (US$38.5 billion), according to the state-run Economic Daily, citing estimates by 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, according to a report from the China Association of Circular Economy in 2023.
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.
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