Recycled batteries reduce dependence on imported raw materials

Text by: Emilia Samuelsson
 |  May 2021

The transport sector urgently needs to be decarbonised and batteries are the key technology underpinning the transition of road vehicles to zero emissions. In March, Transport and Environment (T&E) published a report analysing Europe’s forecasted supply and demand of battery cells and associated raw materials. T&E’s report illustrates that, contrary to the view that electric vehicles (EV) will lead to the plundering of raw materials, once recycling is taken into account the amount of raw material that is used and cannot be recovered is small.

Enough batteries made in the EU for the EV market

With battery electric vehicles (BEV) projected to replace conventional cars in Europe, the demand for battery cells is set to grow in the coming years. In total, the demand for batteries in Europe is projected to reach close to 300 GWh in 2025 and more than 1,300 GWh in 2035.

Today, China has about 80% of global lithium-ion cell production, but Europe’s capacity is set to expand fast. Until 2020, there was a shortfall of batteries produced in Europe to supply all the EVs on the market, but supply could meet demand in 2021 at around 90 GWh if planned production is on schedule. There are 22 battery gigafactories planned over the next decade in the EU, with total production capacity rising from 460 GWh in 2025 to 730 GWh in 2030, a number sufficient to meet the expected EV market. If production is ramped up on schedule, battery supply could even surpass European demand by the mid-2020s.

As European production increases, so will the demand for raw materials such as lithium, nickel and cobalt. But as battery technology evolves, less raw material will be needed to produce each kWh of EV battery. From 2020 to 2030 the quantities of materials needed to produce a kWh of battery capacity are expected to fall by a half for lithium, more than three-quarters for cobalt and by around a fifth for nickel.

Reducing primary demand through recycling

In contrast with the fossil fuels used in internal combustion cars, EV batteries can be part of a circular economy loop. Recycling of battery materials is essential to reduce the pressure on demand for virgin materials, and to limit the negative environmental and societal impacts that extraction can generate. If recovery rates in the draft EU battery regulation are increased to best practice, the amount of material in each battery that cannot be recycled to make new batteries can be reduced by a factor of 3 for lithium, and a factor of 2.5 for cobalt, nickel and copper.

“The recovery of critical raw materials from this e-waste stands below 1% because we do not have the necessary technology and industrial processes in place,” says Commission vice-president Maroš Šefčovič. “If you just collect all the old cell phones we have in our drawers, we can immediately build four million car batteries just from the cobalt,” the Commissioner added, highlighting the vast untapped potential of so-called “urban mining”.¹

If EV battery recycling is also taken into account, the need for raw materials is further decreased under the Commission’s proposed targets. According to these targets, 5% of lithium, 17% of cobalt and 4% of nickel required for EV battery production should be obtained from recycled European EV batteries by 2030. In 2035, this increases to 22% of lithium and nickel and 65% of cobalt, as more cars come to the end of their lifespan. Recycling of EVs starts to have a strong impact from 2030. If current European reserves of raw materials were converted into BEV batteries in 2030, this would account for the equivalent of; the lithium for 200 million BEVs, or 20 million with no recycling, the nickel for 17 billion BEVs, or 0,3 billion with no recycling and the cobalt for 500 million BEVs, or 10 million with no recycling.

Rita Tedesco from ECOS, a network of environmental NGOs, highlights that green standards for batteries are vital to ensure the transition to electro- mobility is done in a really eco-friendly way and stated that “We need performant and durable EV batteries, which are easy to repair,reuse and recycle,”.

Tedesco adds that “Parameters such as the state of health of the batteries and tests to evaluate them need to be comparable throughout different brands. A minimum set of design standards – such as lifting parts – would make the disassembly process for recycling cheaper, simpler and less time-consuming”.²

Comparison with internal combustion engines

During its lifetime, the internal combustion engine (ICE) car burns about 17,000 litres of petrol or 13,500 litres of diesel. The metals used in battery cells weigh around 160 kg. If the battery was recycled and the majority of the metal recovered, around 30 kilograms of metals would be lost. The weight of fuel that is burned during the average lifetime of an ICE car is around 300–400 times more than the total quantity of battery cell metals that are not recovered.When it comes to energy efficiency the BEV will require 58% less energy than a petrol car over its lifetime. With regards to CO₂ lifecycle emissions, the average European BEV emits 64% less CO₂ than a conventional ICE.

Recommendations for phasing out ICE

An EU-wide phase-out date for the sale of ICE cars is needed to accelerate the transition to BEVs. A study by the Ecologic Institute in Germany for Greenpeace makes the assessment that to limit global warming to 1.5°C, ICE cars need to be phased out in Europe by 2025 and hybrid vehicles by 2028³. In addition, all fossil fuel subsidies, oil exploration and extraction in EU countries should be ended. Policies to use cars more efficiently through shared mobility and less private car use in urban areas, will reduce raw materials demand.

Whilst the new EU battery proposal takes an important step towards ensuring that EV batteries meet environmental and social standards, more can be done. Responsible supply chains should be made mandatory, due diligence requirements should be extended to copper, and small-scale mining must be addressed through EU development policies. The proposed battery material recovery targets should be increased to 90% for lithium and 98% for cobalt, nickel and copper.

In summary, there is no comparison between oil and battery materials as battery electric vehicles and their bill of materials are already substantially more beneficial from an environmental, economic, social and resource efficiency point of view.

Lucien Mathieu, transport and e-mobility analyst at T&E concluded that “Recycling of battery materials is crucial to reduce the pressure on primary demand for virgin materials and ultimately limit the impacts raw material extraction can have on the environment and on communities.” Mathieu also added that “With batteries, the EU has the unique opportunity to move away from dependence on raw material imports like it has been for decades with fossil fuels.”

 

Emilia Samulesson

 

Based on Transport & Environment (2021), From dirty oil to clean batteries.

1. Frédéric Simon Raw materials: the missing link in Europe’s drive for batteries https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy-environment/news/raw-materials-the-missing-link-in-europes-drive-for-batteries/

2. Ibid.

3. Read more in Combustion-engine cars need to be phased out in Europe by 2025

4. p24-25 in Acid News Nr 4 December 2020 https://www.airclim.org/acidnews/no-4-december-2020

Opportunities for the Renewable Energy Directive

The current Renewable Energy Directive does not deliver the results needed to meet the Paris Agreement. The transition of the energy system in EU member states from fossil fu- els to 100% renewable energy must accelerate.

2021 – the make or break year for climate action

In April 2021 the World Meteorological Organization published a new assessment in its State of the Global Climate 2020 report

Direct Air Capture: Billionaires dream of vacuuming carbon out of the atmosphere

Direct air capture of CO2 is getting a lot of media traction, and a lot of finance from US billionaires. But the very few machines do not suck up much CO2, so Carbon Engineering uses Photoshop to increase their numbers.

Agri-PV a useful synergy between agriculture and solar energy

The co-developing of land for both solar photovoltaic power and agriculture has gained interest. Experts state that the synergy would benefit food and energy production, as well as  decreasing both water demand and carbon emissions.

Looking back over 40 years

Four Swedish environmentalist organisations set up a joint project for the international dissemination of information on air pollution and acidification. This leads to the establishment of the Swedish NGO Secretariat on Acid Rain in January 1982, re-named the Air Pollution & Climate Secretariat (AirClim) in 2008.

Norway’s romantically named Longship CCS project

Will the Northern Light CO2 storage ever be commercially viable?

CO₂ emissions from the cement industry can be reduced without CCS

Cement emissions in the EU fell more than 10 per cent in 2019–2020, demonstrating that fast, short-term cuts are possible.

Recycled batteries reduce dependence on imported raw materials

A new study assesses the raw materials needed to make electric vehicle batteries and compares them with the materials needed to run a fossil fuel car.

Editorial

Lehan

EU industrial air pollution cost up to €433 billion per year

The cost of damage caused by pollutant emissions into the air from the largest 12,000 industrial facilities in 2017 has been estimated at €277–433 billion, and half of the total cost was caused by less than two per cent of plants.

EU expansion of electric vehicle charging infrastructure too slow

The European Court of Auditors (ECA) evaluated the European Commission’s support for member states’ deployment of charging stations and the associated EU funding.

German offshore wind vital to EU target

Germany’s plan for a massive expansion of offshore wind farms has now been approved by the European Commission. 

EU lawmakers fail again to increase EU climate target

EU should increase the target for 2030 to reduce GHG emissions by at least 65 per cent compared to 1990 levels.

Rail travel is greenest mode of motorised transport

In terms of greenhouse gas emissions, rail travel remains the best mode of motorised passenger transport in Europe, according to two transport and environment studies published by the European Environment Agency (EEA).

Multiple air quality law breaches

In its February infringements package, the European Commission announced that it is referring Slovakia to the EU Court of Justice for breaching the daily EU limits for PM10 in the Banskobystrický region, the city of Kosice and its surrounding region, almost every year since 2005.

Fossil fuels pose risk of stranded assets

Gas is the new coal, with risk of $100 billionin stranded assets.

CCS around the world: lost money, lost promises

The largest CCS project in the world, at Chevron’s Gorgon natural gas processing plant in Western Australia, finally started operation in 2019, three years late, and three years after gas production started. Almost five million tons of CO₂ per year that should have been captured has been released into the atmosphere.

In brief

Carbon dioxide levels are now higher than at any time in the past 3.6 million years

The atmospheric burden of CO₂ is now comparable to the level it was at during the Mid-Pliocene warm period around 3.6 million years ago, when concentrations of carbon dioxide ranged from about 380 to 450 parts per million, reports NOAA. During that period the sea level was about 24 metres higher than today, the average temperature was around 4ºC higher than in pre-industrial times, and studies indicate that large forests occupied areas of the Arctic that are now tundra.

Levels of the two most important anthropogenic greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide and methane, continued their unrelenting rise in 2020 despite the economic slowdown caused by the coronavirus pandemic response, NOAA has announced.

The global surface average for carbon dioxide (CO₂), calculated from measurements collected at NOAA’s remote sampling locations, was 412.5 parts per million (ppm) in 2020, rising by 2.6 ppm during the year. The global rate of increase was the fifth-highest in NOAA’s 63-year record, following 1987, 1998, 2015 and 2016. The annual mean at NOAA’s Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii was 414.4 ppm during 2020.

Analysis of samples from 2020 also showed a significant jump in the atmospheric burden of methane, which is far less abundant but 28 times more potent than CO₂ at trapping heat over a 100-year time frame. NOAA’s preliminary analysis showed the annual increase in atmospheric methane for 2020 was 14.7 parts per billion (ppb), which is the largest annual increase recorded since systematic measurements began in 1983.

 

Compiled by Reinhold Pape

https://research.noaa.gov/article/ArtMID/587/ArticleID/2742/Despite-pandemic-shutdowns-carbon-dioxide-and-methane-surged-in-2020

Advertisements from fossil fuel firms with tobaccolike health warnings

According to the environmental law charity ClientEarth, many of the world’s biggest fossil fuel companies have used advertising to “greenwash” their impact on the climate crisis.

ClientEarth compares adverts produced by a range of companies with their overall climate impact and progress toward climate-safe business models.

Saudi Arabia’s Aramco said it conducted business “in a way that addresses the climate challenge”, yet it is the world’s largest corporate greenhouse gas emitter and plans to continue exploring for more oil and gas, despite having reserves greater than those of Exxon, Chevron, Shell, BP and Total combined. Shell said it was investing in “lower-carbon biofuels and hydrogen, electric vehicle charging, solar and wind power”, yet in 2020 it earmarked $17bn for fossil fuel operations, but just $2bn to $3bn per year for low-carbon businesses. Equinor has talked of increasing its renewable capacity tenfold by 2026, but renewables are planned to make up just four per cent of its energy mix by that date.

“We’re currently witnessing a great deception, where the companies most responsible for catastrophically heating the planet are spending millions on advertising campaigns about how their business plans are focused on sustainability,” stated Johnny White, one of the lawyers at ClientEarth.

The lawyers are urging policymakers to ban all fossil fuel company advertisements unless they are presented with tobacco-style health warnings about the risks of the climate crisis to people and the planet.

 

Source: The Guardian and ClientEarth, April 19th 2021

https://www.clientearth.org/the-greenwashing-files

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/apr/19/a-great-deception-oil-giants-taken-to-task-over-greenwash-ads

101 Nobel Prize laureates urge leaders to end fossil fuel expansion

A hundred and one Nobel laureates are calling for governments around the world to sign up to a fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty to help tackle the climate crisis.

In an open letter to world leaders, scientists, past presidents, novelists and religious leaders are urging governments to commit to a fast and just transition away from fossil fuels, and a “transformational plan” to ensure everyone around the world has access to renewable energy.

The signatories are experts in the fields of peace, human rights, security, economics, literature and the natural sciences, and say they “are seized by the great moral issue of our time: the climate crisis and commensurate destruction of nature”.

The letter states that “for far too long, governments have lagged, shockingly, behind what science demands and what a growing and powerful people-powered movement knows: urgent action is needed to end the expansion of fossil fuel production, phase out current production, and invest in renewable energy.”

Source: The Guardian, Euractive April 21st 2021

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/apr/21/101-nobel-laureates-call-for-global-fossil-fuel-non-proliferation-treaty

Deteriorated rivers breathe out greenhouse gases

Rivers and streams have been found to release up to 3.9 billion tonnes of carbon annually1. Whereas carbon emission from rivers is a natural ecosystem process, the emission rates can be significantly increased by human-induced degradation of rivers. This problem is especially pronounced for urban rivers. A study from the Cuenca urban river system in Ecuador showed, for instance, a clear relationship between pollution status and greenhouse gas emissions, and the global warming potential of heavily polluted rivers was up to ten times higher than that of rivers with acceptable water quality2. Similarly, a study of rivers in Hong Kong showed that emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide were 2.2, 1.5 and 4.0 times higher, respectively, from polluted rivers than from those in better condition3.

A consequence of such findings is that the protection and restoration of rivers could significantly decrease emissions of greenhouse gases from these water bodies. In the EU, the implementation of river restoration programmes as part of the European Green Deal, the Water Framework Directive and the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 is vital in order to improve the state of European rivers. The urgency of such measures was recently highlighted in a scoping paper by the Living Rivers Europe Coalition4, which builds on a position paper by more than 20 NGOs in Europe.

1. https://aslopubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/lol2.10055

2. https://bg.copernicus.org/preprints/bg-2020-311/

3. See https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210323-climate-change-the-rivers-that-breathe-greenhouse-gases, which was the main source of information for this text

4.  https://eeb.org/library/protecting-and-restoring-river-ecosystems-to-support-biodiversity-scoping-paper-on-eu-restoration-targets-for-free-flowing-rivers-and-freshwater-ecosystems/

Big benefits of shore-side electricity

Shore-side electricity can drastically reduce the emissions from fossil-fuel-powered auxiliary engines of ships at berth, according to a new study that has estimated the auxiliary power demand at berth for 714 major ports in the European Economic Area and the UK.

The level of emission reductions depends on whether the auxiliary power demand at berth would be supplied from national grids or from green (CO₂-neutral) electricity. The former could reduce annual CO₂ emissions by 3 Mt, and the latter by 5 Mt. This equals an average reduction of overall shipping emissions by 2.2 (3.7) per cent and requires only 0.2 per cent (6.4 TWh) of the current electricity generation capacity of the EEA and the UK. Using shore-side electricity from the grid can also contribute to substantial annual local air pollution reductions of 86,400 tonnes of NOx, 4,100 t SOx, 1,600 t PM10, 4,300 t CO, 94 t CH₄, 4,800 t NMVOC, and 235 t N₂O.

Link to the study “The CO₂ reduction potential of shore-side electricity in Europe” by B. Stoltz et al: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apenergy.2020.116425

Lisbon going for electric ferries

Ten new electric ferries will come into service in Lisbon, Portugal, between 2022 and 2024, replacing ferries currently running on diesel. The ships will be supplied by ABB and operated by public ferry company Transtejo. They will have total battery capacity of 1,860 kWh per ship, and each ferry will be able to carry up to 540 passengers, at a maximum speed of 17 knots.

Source: Ship & Bunker, 12 April 2021.

Costs of shipping in the Baltic Sea

Shipping is responsible for a range of various pressures affecting the marine environment, air quality and human welfare. In a new Swedish study, scientists have estimated the annual damage costs of shipping activities in the Baltic Sea to amount to €2.9 billion. When comparing the different pressures, they found that costs due to impacts on marine eutrophication (€768 million) and marine ecotoxicity (€582 million) were in the same range as the costs associated with reduced air quality (€816 million) and climate change (€737 million).

Link to the study “Valuating environmental impacts from ship emissions – The marine perspective” by E. Ytreberg, S. Åström, and E. Fridell: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2021.111958

Turkey bans open-loop scrubbers

Turkey has become the latest country to ban the use of open-loop scrubbers on ships in its territorial waters, thus joining a growing list of countries taking action against open-loop scrubbers, including China, Saudi-Arabia, Singapore and many European ports and regions.

Source: Splash247, 12 April 2021.

Phase-out shipping emissions

The European Parliament urges the Commission to “lead by example” in phasing out maritime emissions and support eliminating pollution from ships when in port and restrict air pollutant emissions in EU waters.

In a plenary resolution agreed on 27 April, the parliament repeated its call for the shipping industry to contribute to reaching carbon neutrality by making a 40-per-cent reduction in emissions by 2030, and for the EU emissions trading system to be extended to cover the sector.

They also added new demands, not least the urgent establishing of a sulphur emissions control area (SECA) for the Mediterranean Sea. Member states should also support “swiftly adopting” similar controls for nitrogen oxides, says the resolution, and extend both to all EU waters.

Moreover, member states should ban discharges from open-loop scrubbers, and the Commission should propose a gradual phase-out of the technology, which allows the use of cheap high-sulphur oil.

The parliament also called on the Commission to propose mandating zero-pollution shipping at berth and incentivise the use of onshore power supplies.

Source: Ends Europe Daily, 28 April 2021.

Link: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/TA-9-2021-0131_EN.html

Restrict traffic in cities to tackle air pollution

Banning polluting vehicles could cut harmful PM and NOx pollution in cities of over a million residents by up to 23 and 36 per cent respectively, saving up to €130 million per year in health and other costs, according to a new study for the European Public Health Alliance (EPHA). Researchers have studied 28 types of urban policies currently used in cities, from zero-emission public buses to sharing e-scooters, to see their effect on PM and NOx reductions from traffic.

EPHA Acting Secretary General Sascha Marschang said: “A dirty cloud has been hanging over cities for many decades, causing asthma, heart disease or lung cancer. As we fight Covid-19 through vaccines, we must fight this cloud of disease, too. Now is the time for city bosses to grab with both hands some of the generous Covid stimulus funding available to truly ‘build back better’ to really improve people’s health and their environment.”

Source: EPHA, 23 March 2021.

The report “Air pollution and transport policy at city level”: https://epha.org/air-pollution-and-transport-policies-at-city-level/

EP wants air quality law reforms

On 25 March, the European Parliament approved a resolution calling on the Commission to tighten the Ambient Air Quality Directive to bring pollution limits in line with World Health Organization Guidelines (WHO) and to regulate more air pollutants, such as ultrafine particles, black carbon, ammonia and mercury. It also proposes the replacement of the current target values (for O₃, As, Cd, Ni and BaP) with limit values.

The resolution contains numerous recommendations, including improved air quality monitoring; explicit provisions in the directive to guarantee the right of citizens to justice in line with the Aarhus Convention; and strengthened legislation to reduce emissions at source, particularly from road and maritime transport, aviation, industrial installations, buildings, energy production and agriculture.

Link to the EP report: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/TA-9-2021-0107_EN.html

Clean air possible without lockdown

Cities can permanently achieve pandemic-low air pollution levels by accelerating the ongoing switch to zero-emission vehicles, as well as extra walking, cycling, public transport and teleworking.

Cleaner air will return faster by combing both approaches, according to a study for Transport & Environment (T&E), released one year after the first lockdowns were put in place in Europe. The report comes as governments prepare to spend nearly €700 billion in EU Covid recovery funds, a third of which is earmarked for green investments, including transport.

T&E called on mayors and governments to increase zero-emission zones, reform taxes to favour emissions-free vehicles, roll out the right charging infrastructure and zone off more public space for walking, cycling and public transport. It calls on the EU to announce a phase-out date for all fossil fuel vehicles by 2035 at the latest and tighten its 2025 CO₂ standards for cars, vans, trucks and buses.

Source: T&E, 10-11 March 2021.

The report “Blue Sky Recovery”: https://www.transportenvironment.org/publications/blue-sky-recovery-how-keep-lockdown-low-levels-air-pollution-european-cities