The Opportunity for Utilizing End-of-Life Scrap to Meet Growing Copper Demand

Abstract

As electrification trends and clean energy deployment drive up copper demand, there will be pressure on copper supply chains. With annual copper demand expected to grow by 50% and reach 49 Mt by 2035, the world will continue to need additional sources of copper supply. While expanding mining projects could increase copper production, given the significant stock of material, secondary copper can play a vital role in meeting demand. We analyze the opportunity to meet growing copper demand via increased scrap collection and improved technical recycling efficiencies. We use an economic model of the global copper system—with China analyzed separately from the rest of the world—to quantify supply evolution by incorporating price feedback between demand and supply. The model quantifies the impact of the increased collection on the displacement of mining production and demonstrates how increasing recycling can modulate supply risks and copper prices. Aligned with recent literature on future copper flows, we find that there is an opportunity to increase scrap supply in 2040 by 46% (6.3 Mt) compared with the baseline.