China's dying EV batteries, solar cells are powering a circular economy in new-energy era

The Star

06-05-2025

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% 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. [China] is facing more difficulty in buying from allies of the US, such as Australia and Canada
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 280bil yuan (US$38.5bil), 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, said a Beijing-based professor of environmental economics who declined to be named as he was not authorised to talk to the media.
'While China is intensifying efforts in looking for mines of critical minerals domestically, it is facing more difficulty in buying from allies of the US, 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 US 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 tonnes of resources that can recover non-ferrous metals, Li Yusheng, deputy secretary general of 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 layout in 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, a 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 standardise the battery-recycling market and avoid safety accidents and environmental pollution. A total of 156 companies have been selected so far for the list.
At February's State Council meeting, it passed an action plan aimed at improving the recycling system of car batteries, vowing to build a standardised, safe and efficient recycling system.
This followed a December directive from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, which said enterprises must establish a quality-assurance mechanism with product traceability and accountability, increasing mandatory standards for recycled products.
One of the companies in the white list, Guangdong Brunp Recycling Technology, a subsidiary of CATL, said it was capable of recovering 99.3% of the nickel, cobalt and manganese in a retired battery, and 91% of the phosphorus and lithium.
This helps China form a complete closed loop in new-energy development, said its CEO, Li Changdong, during the country's annual parliamentary gathering in March.
'It ensures that the batteries go where they came from, and it improves the resilience of the new-energy industry's supply chain,' he said.
Lithium-ion batteries contain heavy metals that can leach into the soil and water if not disposed of properly, and recycling them can be hazardous, as cutting in the wrong place may result in it combusting or releasing toxic fumes.
However, most of the retired batteries now end up in small illegal workshops in underdeveloped regions, said Chen Liwen, an environmental activist who has more than a decade of experience in waste disposal.
There is also the urgent need for regulation in the treatment of retired photovoltaics, which have spread to every corner of China after 20 years of development, she warned. 'Many rural households installed small photovoltaics two decades ago. Now, with the first batch retired, some are even being directly thrown into trash bins,' she said.
Against such a backdrop, legal recyclers are struggling to receive enough waste to be processed, resulting in overcapacity, said Ma, the Zhengzhou sales manager.
He expected that the issue would ease as regulation matures and a peak period for battery retirement comes in a couple of years, as many auto brands, including Chinese ones, are speeding up their shift to pure electric cars amid the EU's ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2035.
'So, overall, this is a big track to follow in the next few decades,' he said. – South China Morning Post