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12 COPPER FORUM 28/2010 COPPER FORUM 28/201012

Te concept o sustainability is one o the

current priorities in EU policy. On 16th

July 2008, the European Commission

presented the Sustainable Consumptionand Production and Sustainable Industrial

Policy (SCP/SIP) Action Plan. It includes

a series o proposals that will contribute to

improving the environmental perormance

o products and to increasing the demand

or more sustainable goods and production

technologies. Te Construction Products

Directive and upcoming Regulation have

the same goals or the building sector.

Troughout the past decades, the cop-

per industry has made outstanding progress

in both its environmental and energy per-ormance. Te innovation o the industrys

engineers helped to develop processes that

are still in use today and are considered to

represent the Best Available echnologies

in the EU.

eNerGY effICIeNCY

Te key breakthrough was to exploit the

chemical energy content o the copper ore

eed, thus avoiding the need or externally

produced energy to melt the metal content

o the ore. In act, this ash smelting

process results in an excess o energy that

can be used elsewhere on the production

site, or to eed the district heating grid o a

nearby city. At the same time, the sulphur

dioxide released through smelting the eed

is captured to produce a commercially valu-

able by-product, sulphuric acid. Tis has

made an important contribution towards

the reduction o acid rain across Europe.

IS COPPer

IN arCHIteCtUre

SUStaINaBle?

Te engineers also continued to improve

the ability to separate out the many dier-

ent metal containing compounds that exist

in naturally occurring ores. odays proc-esses can rene the valuable components in

copper ores, such as gold and silver, as well

as collect the various dusts and scale or re-

cycling on site, or through specialised treat-

ment operations managed by third parties.

Te remaining inert materials are then used

in road construction.

lIMItING eMISSIONS

In the 70s and 80s, the need to meet ever

tighter environmental limits has required

companies to make multi-million invest-ments in equipment to reduce emissions to

water and air. Local and national authori-

ties have played an important role in set-

ting site permit conditions that achieve an

appropriate balance between saeguarding

the local environment and maintaining lo-

cal investment and employment.

More recently, the new EU wide rame-

work directives on air, soil, water and sedi-

ment have resulted in a much more intense

ocus on the emissions rom both produc-

tion and materials in use. Te setting o

sae limits or chemicals, including metals,

requires the use o the right methodologies

and the interpretation o a massive amount

o scientic data. All o this is complex

and time-consuming. Under the pressure

to be seen to be providing citizens with an

increasingly risk ree environment, the ten-

dency is, thereore, much more towards in-

creased simplicity resulting in the setting o

uture limits that are arithmetically lower

than those in the past. With no disrespect

to the ofcials charged with managing this

eort, there is insufcient understanding othe consequences o such an approach.

Stakeholders need to place more em-

phasis on carrying out proper cost/benet

analyses beore lowering limit values, par-

ticularly or naturally occurring elements,

such as copper, where natural background

levels and the risk o mineral deciency in

humans and plants need to be taken into

account. For example, in the case o cop-

per production, the climate damaging CO2

emissions rom the energy required to oper-

ate additional cleaning and ltering equip-ment, to urther reduce emissions, would

actually outweigh the benets achieved.

MaJOr COPPer INDUStrY

INVeStMeNt

o assist regulators in their work, over the

past eight years the copper industry has

made a multi-million investment in de-

veloping a comprehensive risk assessment

or the manuacture, use and end o lie

o copper containing products. It has been

extensively reviewed and then approved by

the Commission and Member States. It will

now orm the backbone o the industrys

obligations under the new REACH legis-

lation. Te assessment concluded that the

existing regulatory ramework is sufcient

to ensure that copper causes no risks to the

environment or to humans in its current

applications.

Pia Voutilainen, Dir of the Scandinavian Copper Development Association (SCDA)JohnSchonenberger, CEO from European Copper Institute (ECI)

Pia Voutilainen and John Schonenberger demonstrate how the use

of copper in architecture is consistent with the EUs Sustainable

Consumption and Production action plan.

Svalbard Science Centre

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13COPPER FORUM 28/2010

Metal Products

Use

Corrosion

& Wear

RecyclingMetal

Extraction

and

Production

Complex(Cu-EDTA)

Compound(Cu

4SO

4(OH

6)

Ion(Cu2+)

Mineralisation

Metal Products

Use

Corrosion

& Wear

RecyclingMetal

Extraction

and

Production

Complex(Cu-EDTA)

Compound(Cu4SO4 (OH6)

Ion(Cu2+)

Mineralisation

Coppers use in architecture is extremely sustainable.

External applications have outstanding lie-spans, oten

measured in centuries. At their eventual end o lie, the cop-

per can be recycled again and again, without any loss in per-ormance, with the recycling process only requiring around

20% o the energy needed to extract and process primary

metal. Currently, around 40% o Europes annual copper

demand is sourced via recycling. Te industrys risk assess-

ment also identied that architectural copper contributes less

than 1% o the diuse emissions rom copper products in the

EU. Even then, research shows that this small amount is very

quickly bound to inert compounds and complexes, such as

concrete, in the vicinity o a building.

As we have seen, another important sustainable consideration

or copper is the way in which the mineral extracted rom

the earths crust gives up its energy in the smelting proc-ess. Te challenge acing both industry and policy makers

is how to incorporate these clear benets into the myriad o

eco-design tools, susta inability assessments, socio-economic

analysis linked to substitution and lie cycle assessments that

exist. Long lie and endless recyclability are certainly not

sufciently incorporated into the indicators currently under

development and this needs to be addressed. O particular

importance or Copper Forum readers, through the eorts o

its national Copper Development Associations, the industry

is continuing to support national regulators in, or example,

environmental product declarations. Our European lie cy-

cle inventory data http://www.kupfer-institut.de/lifecycle/has been in place since 2003 and has been accepted into the

EU database.

So, the answer to our original question Is copper in archi-

tecture sustainable? is most denitely yes. In architecture,

copper delivers long lie spans, is indenitely recyclable and

comes rom an industry that has clearly demonstrated its

ability to operate within the EUs challenging regulatory

ramework.

The natural extraction/mineralisation cycle of copper

Trial house in the UK with the high est Level 6 Code for Sustainable Homes r ating.Photo: Denis Jones

The Core, Eden Project, Cornwall, UK

Metal Products

Use

Corrosion

& Wear

Mineralisation

RecyclingMetalExtraction

and

Production

Complex

Compound

Ion