LEAD BATTERY RECYCLING
The booming demand for batteries is going to have to be met somehow — and gigafactories are being conceived, planned and built at breakneck speed. Frank Millard reports on Europe’s moves.
The march of the Insatiable. That’s the only word to describe Europe’s frantic demand for energy storage in the years ahead. In the rush to decarbonization the continent is setting ever tougher CO2 emission targets. Fossil fuels — be they for powering industry, the home or transport — are going to be phased out. Instead renewables will become a vital part of the new energy mix. And with renewables comes this insatiable demand for energy storage. To meet this growing demand, gigafactories are being conceived, planned and built. Although the buzz word here is lithium — it’s not just factories for lithium-ion batteries that will be needed: next generation batteries emerging from other chemistries are also going to need a manufacturing home as countries increasingly adopt intermittent energy sources such as wind and solar. Caspar Rawles, head of price assessments with Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, says his firm is tracking 211 supersized (greater than 1GWh capacity) lithium-ion battery plants
globally, either in operation, construction or in a planning phase, totalling more than 3.8TWh of planned capacity by 2030. In Europe he predicts that by 2030 there could be 22 gigafactories, at whatever stage of readiness, with a total annual capacity of 621GWh. “This is more than enough pipeline capacity but not all of these plants will make the quality of cells required,” says Rawles. “It isn’t guaranteed that they will make it to production, and we are starting to see smaller operators face financial difficulties as competition grows within the space.” The Spanish research centre for electrochemical and thermal energy storage, CIC energiGUNE, does not agree that the proposed capacity for Europe will be enough. It claims that even if all 22 factory projects come to fruition and produce an annual total of 600GWh, it will only meet half of the expected base demand in the continent. And this is just batteries for electric vehicles — stationary storage applications are not even factored in.
By 2030 Europe will have 22 gigafactories at some stage of readiness and a total annual capacity of 621GWh. 56 • Batteries International • Summer 2021
Just one company, Tesvolt, has confirmed it is focusing on batteries for stationary storage: in Germany, it was the first company to build a gigafactory in Europe dedicated to stationary ESSs, and began production in April 2020. The facility at Lutherstadt Wittenberg has a production area of 12,000m², where it makes battery storage systems of various sizes with storage capacities ranging from 9.6kWh into the multiMWs. Italvolt to build largest factory in Europe Italvolt is one example of the new size of factory being planned and built in Europe. Taking over an abandoned Olivetti di Scarmagno plant, the 300,000m² gigafactory near Turin in Italy has a capacity of 45GWh, with the first construction phase due to be completed in spring 2024. The facility will employ 4,000 workers, and the wider ecosystem will provide up to 10,000 new jobs. As well as the main facility, a research and technology centre is being developed in collaboration with the Politechnico University in Torino. Raw materials will arrive on site and enter the production line, emerging as complete battery units of varying sizes
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