Life Cycle Energy Consumption and GHG Emissions of the Copper Production in China and the Influence of Main Factors on the Above Performance

The copper demand and production in China are the largest in the world. In order to obtain the trends of the energy consumption and GHG emissions of copper production in China over a number of years, this paper uses a life cycle analysis method to calculate the above two indexes, in the years between 2004 and 2017. The life cycle energy consumption ranged between 101.78 and 31.72 GJ/t copper and the GHG emissions varied between 9.96 and 3.09 t CO2 eq/t copper due to the improvements in mining and smelting technologies. This study also analyses the influence of electricity sources, auxiliary materials consumption, and copper ore grade on the life cycle performance. Using wind or nuclear electricity instead of mixed electricity can reduce energy consumption by 63.67–76.27% or 64.23–76.94%, and GHG emissions by 64.42–77.84% or 65.08–78.63%, respectively. The GHG emissions and energy consumption of underground mining are approximately 2.97–7.03 times that of strip mining, while the influence of auxiliary materials on the above two indexes is less than 3.88%.