EVENT REVIEWS

EUROBAT Forum 2022 and Annual Convention • June 23-24, Brussels, Belgium

EUROBAT’s Battery Innovation Roadmap made the case for a ‘level playing field’ of investment in technologies to power Europe up to 2030 and beyond. Political leaders were warned not to cherry pick favourites.

Energizing Europe’s future

Zoellner: “Europe is facing new geopolitical realities”

EUROBAT’s annual meeting and forum started, as ever, well. It’s hard to remember a time that it didn’t.

Once the annual meetings were over on the Thursday afternoon, it was almost straightaway to predinner drinks and a very fine meal at Brussels’s Trainworld — a fascinating former railway station converted into a museum and full of current and previous trains and carriages.

The next day started well too.

EUROBAT president and CEO of Hoppecke Batterien, Marc Zoellner, opened the forum calling for the role of batteries to be further elaborated in the European Commission’s ‘REPowerEU’ plan — aimed at severing dependence on Russian gas before 2030.

Zoellner said the new geopolitical realities facing the continent also warranted an update of the Battery Action Plan, launched by the European Battery Alliance in 2017, with a review of policies covering mining, battery materials, battery manufacturing and recycling.

“Batteries have never been more important. They are a key enabler of the mobility transformation and, given the energy situation, they also play a key role as solution for the storage of wind and solar energy,” he said.

The highlight of the morning’s talk was the address by Clarios’ EMEA vice-president for industry and government affairs Christian Rosenkranz who unveiled the ‘EUROBAT 2030 Battery Innovation Roadmap 2.0’. Fundamentally the roadmap set out the case for all battery chemistries to be deployed to help Europe meet its climate and energy sustainability goals.

It also included a further plaintive cry from industry for European R&D public funding activities to be “spread more equally among the different technologies”, by targeting applied research on different applications.

“Today, battery technologies are still competing or are complementary in different market segments and Europe will benefit if it leaves the door open for all technologies to be able to maximize their market innovations,” the roadmap said.

The roadmap is an update of an original publication (from June 2020) to account for the latest technological developments and changes in EU policies, primarily the proposal for a European Batteries Regulation, which is expected to come into force next year.

Industry chiefs say the new roadmap reflects the technological realities and potential of the best available battery technologies and how they can contribute to the EU’s policy objectives.

Rosenkranz, who is also chairman of the Consortium for Battery Innovation, said developing all chemistries “will maximize the contribution of our industry” to meet EU zero-pollution targets and support the European Green Deal and other initiatives.

While lithium and lead-based batteries will remain the dominant battery technologies by 2030, the roadmap acknowledged that the European Commission’s ‘REPowerEU’ plan could be expected

to have an “additional high impact on energy storage demand” that could not be covered by any single technology.

The document cautioned that application-specific developments would further push the boundaries for established technologies, in particular for lithium and lead-based technologies.

Nevertheless, the paper said leadbased batteries would maintain their position with single digit market growth every year until 2030, while lithium ion represented the fastest growing market with double-digit annual growth up to 2030.

Rosenkranz, however, said: “Lead is not going to be redundant.” In motive power and off-road industrial vehicles, for example, “the mainstream technology in 2030 is still going to be lead based, even though lithium is growing fast”.

The innovation potential of the mainstream established technologies will be driven by new technology branches in lead, such as pure lead, lead-carbon and bipolar, according to the roadmap.

Lithium ion batteries are expected to forge ahead because of the “diversity in technologies”, but there are still a “large variety” of key performance indicators to improve.

The roadmap concluded that the development of lithium ion technologies suitable for industrial and automotive applications is also “still a challenge” in terms of material research, process, production, development, recycling, safety and transportation, the paper said.

Meanwhile, the document reiterated warnings to EU leaders that “putting too much emphasis” on one technology would represent a strategic risk for Europe’s global competitiveness, negatively affect buying power for millions of the bloc’s citizens and damage EU industrial knowledge across key markets.

Rosenkranz: “the mainstream technology in 2030 is still going to be lead based”

The next EUROBAT Forum and Annual Convention will be held in Madrid, Spain on June 6-7, 2023

EUROBAT ’22 NEWS IN BRIEF

New technologies skills challenge

Petr Dolejší, director of mobility and sustainable transport at ACEA — the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association — said that Europe was still putting together the pieces of a ‘sustainability puzzle’, noting that decarbonization ambitions could only be achieved once all other elements were in place.

Lead ‘packs €15bn economic punch’

Derek Cutler, chief economist at economic research and analysis firm EBP-US, presented the detailed findings of analysis published in April that showed the lead battery industry is worth an estimated €15 billion ($16 billion) of value added or gross domestic product a year to the European economy.

The report — ‘Economic Contribution of the European Lead Battery Industry’ — said the downstream industry activity driven by the use of lead batteries is worth €7.3 trillion of gross domestic product across retail, construction and healthcare.

According to the report, nearly €40 million is invested in R&D annually by the lead battery industry — further boosting growth and productivity.

In addition, the report confirmed that new lead batteries, which are all recycled when collected in Europe, typically include up to 80% recycled content.

‘Localized supply chains for OEMs’

Wolfgang Bernhart, senior partner at consultants Roland Berger, underlined the need for OEMs to secure stable supplies of raw/refined battery materials. Failure to do so could jeopardize their EV business models, Bernhart said in his presentation.

Greater localization of the supply chain could reduce cost, risk, political exposure and reduce the CO2 footprint of material supplies.

Gigafactories need legal ‘coherency’

Violaine Verougstraete, chemicals management director for Eurometaux, told the forum that despite European Union support to build a network of battery cells gigafactories across the bloc, there remained a need for coherence, predictability and efficacy in environmental legislation.

She cautioned against “burdensome reviews” being undertaken authorities of existing legislation, such as the European Chemicals Agency’s REACH (Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals) list.

Verougstraete also said that more than 30 gigafactory projects had begun or were planned across the EU and UK combined. Alas she did not say how many would be around 10 years’ hence.

Mandatory EU battery recycling

Valerie Plainemaison, secretarygeneral of the European Waste Management Association, said proposed EU regulations for mandatory recycled content would be crucial to making a success of the incoming Batteries Regulation.

EU recycling capacity needs to be increased by 25 times until 2030 to manage the flow of end-of-life EV batteries, she said.

Mandatory recycled content proposals would also boost localized materials supply chains for European battery makers and reduce the bloc’s dependency on third countries for raw materials.

NEC, Birmingham, UK • June 29-30

Four events in one. This was held in two giant halls at the UK’s National Exhibition Centre. These were The Advanced Materials Show, Ceramics UK, Battery Cells & Systems Expo and Vehicle Electrification Expo.

Cross-fertilization of ideas: a conference road less travelled

Not just a good event, but a great event. That was the comment of one attendee at the launch event of these four co-located shows. Despite facing competition from a similar event in Europe, the well established The Battery Show held in Stuttgart on the same days and also a similar meeting in Australia, attendance was high.

Certainly, the statistics were good.

The four co-located shows welcomed 308 exhibiting companies, 3,142 attendees and 93 speakers across four conference tracks, said the organizers: “Over 84% of attendees at the show were decision-makers and influencers from their retrospective companies, which included 1,373 unique organizations in attendance from 40 countries over six continents.”

This is certainly no mean feat given that this was the first time the event had been held — and certainly indicative of a huge up-swell of interest into these interrelated meetings.

But it was also cleverly put together. Too much of modern electrochemical advances are isolated from their context in terms of material and engineering.

Ben Silverstone, head of the WMG Skills Group at the University of Warwick said: “My favourite part of the show has been having all the different elements in the same place: advanced batteries, EVs, ceramics and the like.

“It’s been really good to have those cross-fertilization discussions and linking up with people who we may not have had the opportunity to link up with if it had been a single industry-focused event.”

It was much more than an exhibition, however. There were four co-located conferences and related presentations going on.

Battery Cells & Systems Expo and Vehicle Electrification Expo conference was dedicated to battery development, broader electrification and manufacturing strategy, which welcomed expert speakers from McLaren Applied, Rimac Technology, Tevva, NPL among others.

The Advanced Materials Show and Ceramics UK conference blended programme featured twotracks tackling the challenges and opportunities in materials innovation and materials industrialization respectively, and welcomed expert speakers, for example, from Cerion, Tata Steele, Henry Royce Institute, and NovoMOF.

“The exhibitors at the show showcased some incredible innovative technology,” said the organizers. “Keyence who are leaders in industrial automation and inspection systems displayed 3D microscopes, laser marking solutions and automated inspection solutions. The University of Wolverhampton brought the

Battery Cells & Systems Expo is an international showcase of manufacturers, users and the entire supply chain working to increase battery performance, cost and safety. The show brings together automotive OEMs, electric utilities, battery cell manufacturers, system manufacturers and integrators along with the entire manufacturing supply chain.

Formula 3 car, the winning vehicle of the Championship F3 Cup UK 2021 season.

The show was host to key events across the two days, including the leaders in graphene — clearly one of the key ingredients in EV battery development and manufacturing — participating in five curated roundtable discussions, focusing on the barriers and opportunities in graphene production and application.

The show also had what the conference organizers called “a VIP campaign” — essentially an extra stream for participation and complete with complimentary refreshments. This included, for the chosen few, the opportunity to attend a special tour and reception at the UK Battery Industrialisation Centre in nearby Coventry.

For those of us lucky to attend the UKBIC tour, this provided a fascinating chance to speak individually about the approach of the centre to scaling up proven, at least in the lab, technologies and develop them into the stepping stones leading to commercial possibilities.

“I was impressed by some of the UKBIC facilities — in particular their testing methodology and equipment — but I was equally taken by the wealth and range of expertise of the staff,” one attendee said to Batteries International.

The VIP campaign, however, did not extend to the refreshments. One Dutch and British pair were vociferous in their moaning that the sign saying drinks — complete with a picture of a glass of wine — only led them to the inevitable British cup of tea and biscuit!

The four conference sections in each corner of the auditorium were busy throughout the two days with, on occasion, there were audiences of over 100 people seated and standing room only.

Two sessions particularly stood out.

Dirk Spiers, perhaps the key figure in the development of a second life market for lithium batteries, hosted a lively discussion on the challenges of repurposing, repairing or recycling unfit-for-use EV batteries.

Withers & Rogers hosted an intellectual property seminar, detailing in very practical ways how one could leverage commercial benefit from innovations. This included how to identify intellectual property in the business, how to protect IP assets, and how to use this to further one’s business goals.

Sarah Connolly, innovation lead at Innovate UK, part of UKRI summed up the show. “It’s been wonderful to hear how all of the pieces of the puzzle are coming together for the future of sustainability of the materials industries. I’ll definitely be coming back next year.”

Adam Moore, one of the organizers of the event, said: “The success of the show at this its launch event is tribute to the excitement that’s being generated in the UK over battery development and the fact that this country is poised for huge growth in the years ahead.”

“It’s been wonderful to hear how all of the pieces of the puzzle are coming together for the future of sustainability of the materials industries”

The next Battery, Cells and Systems Expo and Vehicle Electrification Expo is on June 28-29, 2023 and will be co-located with The Advanced Materials Show and The Advanced Ceramics Show at the NEC, Birmingham UK.