Lifecycle Traceability System for Metal Recovery from Renewable Energy Waste in South Korea

South Korea depends largely on imports to secure its critical minerals. In the case of lithium, 66% of the demand is imported from China and 31% from Chile, while the price of Lithium continues to rise with the growth of the battery market. By the end of 2025, copper prices are expected to continue rising due to the supply crisis, intensifying the competition for securing resources. To address this international resource-securing crisis, this research focuses on the possibility of recovering metals from waste resources generated by domestic renewable energy facilities.

South Korea operates four Future Waste Resources Base Collection Centers to collect waste batteries from electric vehicles(EV), waste solar panel and wind turbine, conducting performance assessment and resale. However, a detailed analysis of whether waste batteries and panels are reused or recycled is not traceable, thereby limiting the accurate measurement of resource-circulation efficiency.

Although the recovery rates of waste batteries is high(about 14,000 units in 2024), but it is not traceable whether they are reused for energy storage systems(ESS) or recycled for resource recovery. To address this limitation, since 2025, the introduction of the Battery Lifecycle Management System has enabled full lifecycle tracing of EV batteries, whereas batteries from other sources remain outside the tracking system.

Since 2023, the implementation of the Extended Producer Responsibility system for waste solar panels has aimed to enhance resource-circulation efficiency. But the actual quantities recycled, reused, or simply discarded remain unclear, even if the projected amount of waste solar panels in 2025 is 14,596 tons according to the Korea Environment Institute.

While attention is often given to the recycling of wind turbine blades, wind power facilities also possess significant potential for metal resource recovery, as they contain approximately 4.3 tons of copper per MW in onshore installations and 9.6 tons per MW in offshore installations. In particular, a recovery potential of approximately 1,870 tons of copper is estimated from about 483MW of wind power facilities that are expected to reach the end of their life cycle in the early 2030s. Nevertheless, the recycling status of components other than nacelles and blades, such as towers and cables, remains entirely unverified.

Therefore, the introduction of a full-lifecycle tracing system for renewable energy waste resources is proposed. Similar to the Battery Lifecycle Management System, identification numbers are assigned to solar panels and wind power facilities so that the entire process from production to disposal and recycling can be traced, thereby visualizing the domestic circulation path of metal resources and providing a basis for enhancing the actual recycling rate.