Battery circularity: how used EV batteries become future resources
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What is the projected scale of end‑of‑life EV batteries by 2040?
Imagine it's twenty forty. Electric vehicles are no longer the exception. There are millions of them on the road every day. To take people to work, move them in buses through cities, deliver parcels to homes and haul pallets of goods across borders. But quietly. The batteries powering these vehicles begin to degrade and need to be retired and replaced. Around fourteen million electric vehicle batteries could reach their end of life by twenty forty. So what are we looking at? A mountain of waste? Or can millions of used batteries become a source of valuable materials for future vehicles? That's what we're exploring in this episode. The Second Life of Batteries for Electric Vehicles, or EVs, and how innovation can help turn a huge pile of end-of-life materials into a strategic resource.
I'm Marguerite McCaughan and I work in communication at the European Patent Office.
The European Patent Office podcasts bring you an insight into the technology and innovation shaping the world.
This episode builds on a recent report from our Observatory on Patents and Technology in cooperation with the International Energy Agency and explores innovation in battery circularity. At the EPO, we look at where technology is going through patent data. And when it comes to batteries, the question is not only how to make them better when they're new, but also how do we keep them in the loop after their first turn is over. This approach to technology has a name.
Why are lithium, cobalt, nickel and other metals considered critical for EV batteries?
Battery circularity. It includes recycling and reusing batteries for new applications. To dive into the topic, I first turned to one of the co authors of the report, Teo Lombardo, to find out why batteries are becoming such a critical issue right now. Teo Lombardo is an analyst and modeller focused on battery technologies at the International Energy Agency.
Batteries are becoming a critical issue because they are, in particular, LittleMyo batteries, are particularly versatile technologies, which in the past 10 years moved from being used only in few applications to now really being the backbone of several critical sectors and strategic applications. In 2015, about half of the deployment was on port. portable electronics, meaning our phones, laptops, and so on and so forth. In twenty twenty five portable electronics accounted for only less than five percent of the total. Now the primary driver of demand is electric vehicles, accounted for over seventy percent in twenty twenty five
Teo mentions that lithium ion batteries play a particularly important role here. Lithium, nickel, cobalt, along with manganese and graphite are called critical materials. They are natural substances needed to make modern technologies work, but getting them is neither easy nor predictable. Only a few countries produce or process a lot of them, so if that supply stops, many others can be affected. Most electric vehicle batteries cannot be made without these materials. If supply is disrupted or prices rise, the batteries become harder or more expensive to produce. Europe in particular depends a lot on other countries for these critical materials. The European Union is trying to reduce this dependency by, for example, setting targets for recovering critical materials from old devices and legal means such as defining lithium-ion batteries as hazardous waste.
This should help keep more material from battery recycling inside Europe for processing. But this raises a crucial question. Are there enough critical materials to meet the demand for new batteries? Here's to you again.
And if you look at resources that are basically the total lithium deposits that are known around the world, those are almost 20 times higher than the cumulative projected demand between today and 2040 that we project under current and stated policies.
What is the environmental impact of extracting and transporting battery critical materials?
Another element to have in mind that is important is that those resources and reserves are not fixed in time, but we discover more. and more deposits around the world. There are, however, challenges behind critical materials, and those are completing projects and mining projects rapidly enough to satisfy the rapidly growing demand, as well as the geographical concentration with those materials that are extracted and refined only in few countries around the world.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the projected scale of end‑of‑life EV batteries by 2040?
0:04–1:35
2
Why are lithium, cobalt, nickel and other metals considered critical for EV batteries?
1:35–4:11
3
What is the environmental impact of extracting and transporting battery critical materials?
4:11–7:28
4
How is battery circularity defined and why is it important for a sustainable energy future?
7:28–10:14
5
How are diagnostic tools used to evaluate the second‑life potential of retired EV batteries?
10:14–12:12
6
What technologies enable safe mechanical disassembly of end‑of‑life batteries?
12:12–13:49
7
How will the EU digital battery passport improve recycling and second‑life applications?
13:49–15:02
8
What are the biggest opportunities and challenges for battery circularity beyond 2030?
15:02–15:29