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Recovering critical minerals from waste such as used batteries, end-of-life vehicles and electronic equipment could meet more than half of Europe’s demand by 2050, a new report says.

Recycling is seen as a potential route for Western countries to reduce their dependence on imports of critical minerals vital for manufacturing clean energy technologies – from electric vehicles (EVs) to solar panels and wind turbines.

In a major report published this Wednesday, the Future Availability of Secondary Raw Materials (FutuRaM) project, a research initiative funded by the European Union, found the bloc could reduce its reliance on mineral supply chains dominated by China if it took advantage of its “urban mines”.

Safer supplies, less mining

Kees Baldé, one of the report’s authors and a senior researcher at the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR), said harnessing the critical minerals potential of Europe’s waste streams would be “essential for strengthening supply security, supporting the clean-energy transition, and reducing environmental impacts”.

The report recommends a “structural shift” in how waste is managed in Europe, as countries currently track these raw materials differently and lack a unified regional market. It also recommends increased investment in industrial capacity for recycling, skills-building and awareness campaigns.

China currently has a firm hold on the production and refining of 19 out of 20 critical minerals identified by the International Energy Agency (IEA), including lithium – a key ingredient in EV batteries – and rare earths, which are used in permanent magnets inside clean technologies such as in EV motors.

In the last year, amid trade tensions with the US and Europe, China has enacted export controls on rare earths and the components made with these magnets, as well as lithium batteries and their components. According to the IEA, this “could lead to increased costs for batteries, with potential knock-on effects on the affordability of EVs and storage”.

The country also currently dominates the recycling of these minerals, as it currently accounts for about 80% of the world’s recovery capacity, according to IEA estimates. In 2024, the Asian nation established the China Resources Recycling Group, a state-owned company leading the push for recovering minerals.

Minerals recovery scenarios

The FutuRaM study analysed Europe’s recycling potential under three scenarios by 2050 – one where business continues as usual, one where recovery conditions are improved and one of full circularity where all of the potential secondary materials are recycled.

In 2022, the baseline year for comparison, about 2 million metric tons of critical minerals were contained in waste, a figure that is projected to grow to up to 6 million tons by 2050 in the 27 EU countries plus Switzerland, Norway, the UK and Iceland.

Some key raw materials among them lithium, cobalt and rare earth elements are largely lost during collection or waste processing today, the report says.

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From the 2 million tons of critical minerals found in waste generated, about half was recovered as “secondary raw materials”, which means they are collected in some form but without processing. If all these secondary raw materials already collected were functionally recycled, they could supply up to 56% of Europe’s critical minerals demand by 2050, the study estimates.

The interventions needed depend on the type of waste. For example, end-of-life vehicles already have a high collection rate in the EU, and they contain minerals with a high potential for recoverability such as a variety of rare earth elements, the report says. But most of these minerals are not processed. Recycling EVs, in particular, contributes the most.

“Whether Europe realises this potential depends on the choices made now – on legislation, recycling infrastructure, and data collection. Considering these powerful findings, our mindset needs to shift to think of ‘secondary’ sources of CRMs as the new primary source [mining ores],” said Pascal Leroy, director of the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Forum, which reviewed the report.

A 2026 report by the University of Technology Sydney suggested that increased recycling, along with energy efficiency measures, can help meet the minerals needed for the energy transition by 2050 without increasing mining in sensitive ecosystems like the deep sea or biodiversity hotspots.

The IEA estimates that successfully scaling up recycling can lower the need for new mining
activity by 25-40% by 2050 in a scenario that meets national climate pledges.

The post Recycling could meet half of Europe’s critical mineral needs by 2050 appeared first on Climate Home News.

Recycling could meet half of Europe’s critical mineral needs by 2050

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