Wanted: Lithium-ion Battery Recycling
Rapid growth in the market for electric vehicles is imperative, to meet global targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, to improve air quality in urban centres and to meet the needs of consumers, with whom electric vehicles are increasingly popular. However, growing numbers of electric vehicles present a serious waste-management challenge for recyclers at end-of-life. Nevertheless, spent batteries may also present an opportunity as manufacturers require access to strategic elements and critical materials for key components in electric-vehicle manufacture: recycled lithium-ion batteries from electric vehicles could provide a valuable secondary source of materials.
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Recycling electric-vehicle batteries at end-of-life is essential for many reasons. At present there is little hope that profitable processes will be found for all types of current and future types of electric-vehicle LIBs without substantial successful research and development, so the imperative to recycle will derive primarily from the desire to avoid landfill and to secure the supply of strategic elements. The environmental and economic advantages of second-use and the low volume of electric-vehicle batteries currently available for recycling could stifle the development of a recycling industry in some places. In many nations, the elements and materials contained in the batteries are not available, and access to resources is crucial in ensuring a stable supply chain. Electric vehicles may prove to be a valuable secondary resource for critical materials. Careful husbandry of the resources consumed by electric-vehicle battery manufacturing—and recycling—surely hold the key to the sustainability of the future automotive industry.
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Which requires more mining — fossil fuels or clean energy?
The short answer to this question is that fossil fuels require much more mining and drilling than clean energy technologies. Today the world mines 8 billion tons of coal every year, whereas the clean energy transition is estimated to require around 3.5 billion tons of minerals in total over the next three decades.
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We can always do better
Clean energy technologies will always have non-zero climate and environmental impacts. The best solution is to use less energy and materials to begin with. Rather than simply replacing gasoline-fueled cars with EVs, we should also try to reduce car use altogether through better urban planning and public transportation. Walking and biking (including electric bikes and scooters, a.k.a. micromobility) and riding buses and trains all have substantially lower environmental impacts than driving any car. And weatherizing buildings can reduce their energy consumption by one-third.
Thus it’s ultimately better for the environment to deploy clean technologies today than to continue interminably mining, drilling, refining, transporting, and burning dirty fossil fuels, while working toward using less energy and materials in the long-run.
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