Prediction of China's copper material flows under carbon emissions projections for the shared socioeconomic pathways

• Conducting a life cycle assessment and material flow analysis to quantify the overall carbon footprint of copper production. • Analyzing the prospect of China's domestic copper production and utilization under the constraint of carbon budgets in shared socioeconomic pathways scenarios (SSP1–SSP5). • Indicating the potential of secondary material substituting primary material through the proportion change of primary and secondary produced refined copper. • Exploring the impact of copper stocks and intensity on economic performance. • Proposing policy recommendations for copper utilization, recovery, and carbon reduction in China. The production and utilization of metal resources are a major source of carbon emissions and will be constrained by future carbon peaking and carbon neutrality. Based on carbon emissions scenarios of Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSP1–5), we performed a life cycle assessment and material flow analysis to analyze future domestic copper production and utilization under the constraint of CO 2 budgets in China. Our findings indicates that secondary copper has potential to substitute primary copper as a major component of copper production in the future. Copper in-use stock shows a peaking trend, while the flow intensity is projected to show an overall decreasing trend, indicating the beginning of a transitional period relating to economic growth and copper utilization. Meanwhile, the increase of recovery level shows contributions to copper production. Conclusions above suggest the importance of active resource recovery and the decoupling of metal production from economic activities.