Specialist
Former SVP at Umicore SA/NV
Agenda
- EV battery life cycle, potential to extend and post-life uses
- Recycling capacity, ramp-up challenges and new technologies
- Key raw material supply limitations and potential for recycling as a source for raw material supply to EV battery manufacturers
- Recycling profit pool opportunity and views on likely players
Questions
1.
How long does a battery in an EV last? Is it around 7-8 years or up to 15 years?
2.
Is there any way to extend the battery life? Once you get to the end of this seven- or 10-year period, could you extend it with work, or would you expect it to go straight into recycling?
3.
Do you always think of battery life in years, or is there also a mileage element that would be more useful?
4.
For the purposes of ease, I have used a seven-year lifetime and assessed EVs made in 2014, of which there were 320,000 sold globally, and an average battery weight of around 500KG, which would be 160,000 metric tonnes of batteries. What is your best estimate of global recycling capacity compared to those EV batteries that would need recycling now?
5.
What’s your best estimate for global EV battery recycling capacity?
6.
I read that the world’s largest giga-scale lithium-ion battery recycling facility has got backing and would eventually be 8,000 metric tonnes, which would be around 5% of global recycling demand from 2014 on a seven-year timeline. You mentioned it could go up to 100,000-200,000 metric tonnes for a world-scale plant in the future in what would be profitable or what could potentially be profitable. How big do you think these plants could really get?
7.
In 2019, around 2.1 million EVs were sold, which means in around 2026, we’ll need 1.05 million metric tonnes of recycling capacity if we don’t want any to go into landfill or be used in some of these other applications that we’ve indicated. Do you think building out one million metric tonnes’ worth of capacity for recycling in the next 6-7 years is possible?
8.
Do you think it will be OEMs that end up paying the bill and making these plants?
9.
Why would the OEMs not do the plants? Are they not comfortable with their EV sales projections, or are they not comfortable with how long they expect a battery to last? If they know how many sales they’ve made already, can they not forecast quite easily how many batteries are going to need recycling in X years’ time?
10.
What happens to an EV battery that isn’t recycled and the grid applications or some of the second-life applications still haven’t been sorted? What happens to these batteries?
11.
Are all the batteries that are not recycled going into landfill? How toxic is this waste?
12.
What will happen when there’s a million tonnes of batteries that need recycling in seven years and there’s still not capacity? Where do those batteries go? Where do you store them and who stores them?
13.
Are these batteries damaging the environment in any way, or are there any leakages of certain toxic battery materials?
14.
The break-even for a Volvo is around 48,000 miles, taking 24 metric tonnes of CO2 to make a Volvo Polestar 2, one of its EVs, and 14 tonnes for a Volvo XC40, and if you shift over to renewables, the break-even goes down to 31,000 miles. With the VW Golf vs e-Golf, around 43% of the CO2 comes from the battery. Then if you compare recycling methods, primary raw material extraction, you’ve got around 4,500kg of CO2 per tonne of batteries, and for pyrometallurgical, that goes down to 1,244kg. You can reduce the break-even miles from 48,000 miles to 12,500 miles with pyrometallurgical, it would seem. Do you agree with the maths, or could you point out where we’ve gone wrong?
15.
Do you have a rough indication of how much more effective in CO2 per tonne it would be to use pyrometallurgical or some of the other hydrometallurgical techniques compared to primary extraction?
16.
Do you think OEMs could charge a pricing premium for a recycled battery given that its break-even miles in CO2 would be much lower, or would you not expect a customer to pay for that?
17.
Can you outline the challenges of battery format differences that leads to challenges in automating the disassembly of batteries?
18.
At the OEM level, do you think there is justification for moving more towards standardised battery packs, to be able to automate the disassembly process?
19.
You mentioned one of the key reasons the OEMs are not doing it is because they expect the net value of the battery to be negative, or at least there’s a risk of that. Can you outline what it would take for the net value of a battery to turn positive?
20.
One of the key risk factors you mentioned is good metal pricing for the net value of the battery to turn positive. Do you think this is a risk that Glencore or other trading houses would be interested in taking on, and can they structure any trade in a way that they can take that risk so the OEM can think about starting to ramp up recycling?
21.
Do you think OEMs will be encouraged to set up exclusive raw material supply agreements with the recycling players, and can they include that in the contract for guaranteeing supply of batteries to the recycling players?
22.
You mentioned China has 50,000-100,000 metric tonnes of capacity, by your estimates. Do you expect it could ramp this capacity up further, and can Europe ramp up similar volumes such as 50,000-100,000 metric tonnes, given the amount actually seems quite high?
23.
Do you expect the European Battery Alliance to have any impact on recycling or funding recycling projects in a similar way to the government support in China?
24.
Do you expect any situation where in, say, the next 10 years, EV battery recycling capacities aren’t significantly ramped up almost to the point where you can recycle 100% of EV batteries?
25.
What is your best-case or worst-case scenario case on capacity ramp-up in Europe?
26.
Which players in the market could potentially ramp up capacity? Do you think it’s purely risk-taking and having the right contracts in place, or do you think there’s also a level of IP and skill that we need to take into consideration?
27.
How do you assess the role of start-ups in the market who are dedicated to improving these processes? I think Duesenfeld is one where they’ve got 72% mechanical efficiency for recycling a lithium-ion battery, and if you add hydrometallurgy, that can go up to 91%. Do you expect there to be significant capacity build-outs of these new technologies coming in?
28.
Do you think there will be any difference between recycled materials vs raw materials that have just been extracted?
29.
Is there any impact of the different battery configurations, different ratios, such as 811 or NMC [nickel manganese-cobalt]?
