Recycling 22

THE BRIGHT FUTURE OF EV BATTERIES HAS ITS CHALLENGES

Peter Cowan, Director at Gigamine, argues that recycling existing materials is a matter of urgency.

“Ambition,” said Elvis Presley, “is a dream with a V8 engine.” I disagree. Ambition is a dream with an EV engine. That dream is fast becoming reality. In 2018 there were about 5.5 million electric cars on the world’s roads. By the end of 2021 this had tripled to 16.5 million. Nearly 500,000 of these are on British roads alone. We are witnessing a technological revolution.

Roadblocks

There are snags. The main one is that demand is outpacing supply. The automotive sector’s world battery demand could exceed 2,800 gigawatt-hours (GWh) by 2030, more than double the forecast for 2025. But it faces shortages in lithium, nickel, cobalt and other of the main elements in EV batteries. It is, therefore, vital that the EV automotive sector – which by 2026 will account for half of the demand for cobalt, ahead of phones and computers – secures enough raw materials for the industry to grow.

Shortages are not scarcities. There is no scarcity of the elements themselves. As Elon Musk, the Tony Stark of EV, wrote: “Lithium is almost everywhere on earth, but the pace of extraction and refinement is slow.” Because demand remains high, lithium prices have soared this year to 438% higher than last. The war in Ukraine, which has scuppered supply chains in countless other industries, destabilised the global supply of nickel – Russia being one of its top producers. The same story applies to palladium.

The colourfully-named ‘Mr Nickel’ – mining expert Joe Lowry – said: “In the next two years, even though there will be significant growth in supply, it will be less than demand, so the gap will just continue to grow.” So will the number of competitors for these raw materials. Newcomers enter the market every year. Established players, Musk included, have toyed with entering the mining industry to circumvent the exorbitant price of buying from others. Battery manufacturer CATL has already invested in four mining companies since 2018.

There are some short-term solutions. Companies can invest in more efficient batteries that use less of a given material. The Advanced Propulsion Centre reports that, by 2030, up to 25% of EV cars manufactured in Europe will have LFP – lithium iron phosphate, or LiFePO4 – batteries, which use less nickel. These can take about 2,000 charge cycles, four to seven times as many as lithium-ion or lead acid.

But clearly this is not so much a solution as a trade-off. Using less nickel is no answer to the shortage of lithium – and the supply of both is determined at the moment by capricious market forces. Even if the supply of certain materials picks up, it may still struggle to meet demand. The Cobalt Institute, for example, reported: “From 2024-26 supply growth will average 8% per year, compared to more than 12% for demand.”

Lithium is almost everywhere on earth, but the pace of extraction and refinement is slow.

- Elon Musk

An ambitious circle

Such are the pressures on the future of EV battery use. Failure to adapt is not an option. We face a climate crisis which all but necessitates a transition to renewable energy. EVs must play a significant role in our drive to net zero. But for EV to remain viable we must, for all the above reasons, develop a way to recycle and reuse the raw materials upon which it depends.

The ambition is to develop a sustainable model for lithium-ion battery recycling and reuse, and a business that can be scaled globally. The technology exists. As things stand, however, refineries capable of separating and extracting minerals from used batteries are inefficient. Nor are they to be found in the UK.

This last point makes little sense. The UK has the second largest electric car market in Europe, trailing Germany but ahead of France. That market is set to grow. It can take up to 20 years for a new mine (most of them in central Africa) to get up and running. Recycling existing materials is therefore a matter of urgency. It would establish a fine example, right at the heart of the government’s green agenda, of a truly circular economy: the decoupling of economic activity from the consumption of finite resources. It is the best, and perhaps the only, option for making clean energy sources viable long term, as the recycling of raw materials presents an opportunity for second-life applications.

Though in its early stages of development, EV battery recycling is a global business opportunity. Investors in it can be part of a movement to achieve what was once thought impossible – just as Elvis Presley could never have imagined popping his beloved V8 in the green recycling bin.

Gigamine is a UK-based startup developing technology to recycle lithium-ion EV batteries.

PETER COWAN

Director, Gigamine

gigamine.co.uk

GREENER WAYS TO ACCESS WATER

Jonquil Hackenberg, Global head of sustainability and climate response at PA Consulting, discusses how businesses can sustainably access that most precious commodity - water.

For businesses, water demand is only going to increase, and in the very near future it will be vital to access water in new ways. This is a challenge for many organisations. But get it right, and it doesn’t just help with water supplies, it has a real impact on bringing down carbon use. That’s because water production, conveyancing and purification takes up an inordinate amount of energy. So, reducing and reusing water has even more impact than you might immediately realise. In fact, our recent research suggests that organisations have the potential to save 86 billion cubic metres of water between now and 2030. That’s equivalent to the yearly water consumption of Japan, and a reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of 12 million tonnes. Or to put it another way, it is equivalent to delivering up to a quarter of the cuts required to achieve the Paris Agreement targets. In the future, resource scarcity will be the key driver behind competition, not just the end consumer. It seems like a no-brainer for businesses to get on top of this. What gets in the way? The perception for many people that water is ‘free’ or ‘cheap’ doesn’t help. In the Western world, few organisations are really putting a value on water. With climate change and more risks to supply that is changing – but slowly. Many businesses are leaning heavily on public water supplies, with a large proportion of those we spoke to (46%) using this as their primary source. Data can be another blocker. Finding greener ways to access water depends on understanding your existing usage. Around a third (35%) of leaders we spoke to highlighted the low uptake of technology as a barrier to monitoring water usage and its link to carbon emissions. The inability to share data, disincentives for data sharing, poor quality data and the incompatibility of data all play a part. So what can you do to access water in greener ways?

Think beyond fresh

Fresh water doesn’t have to be the default. Water innovators are working hard to create more usable water, whether that’s converting wastewater into reusable water or providing new water sources at the point of need by making greywater potable. With so much of the world’s water found in oceans, desalination is an obvious route to more usable water. But it’s a trade-off: the energy used to produce it is currently up to 23 times that used for conventional water, which increases costs and carbon.

What’s more, the chemicals used to clean water have a significant impact on biodiversity, with chemical pollutants being released through reverse osmosis. However, the technology is always improving. For example, Desolenator

The perception for many people is that water is free or cheap.