Battery Revolution Clubhouse Recording - Battery Regulation

0:00Transcript

0:00But just by way of background, the global EV stock currently in the world is greater than 30 million. But this is projected by the International Energy Agency to rise to 125 million by 2030. Now, despite this potential, you know, what's been described as seismic growth of the EV market, the concern that we have about this is that we have as yet no really clear plans about how we're going to manage the vast quantities of end of life EV batteries that are going to come onto the market when the current fleet of EVs start to age. The only reason why we haven't seen the problem yet is because we're in the first generation of EVs, which is still, you know, not old enough to be retired. But our concern is what's going to happen when these batteries start to get retired from EVs and we're going to then have to deal with them because there is no clear plan as yet. Just before I go into EVs, you know, just what is net zero and what are we hoping to achieve from the EV transition?

1:03So tackling climate change is at the top of the global agenda today. One way we can help to do this is to reach net zero. We've all heard the term net zero, but what exactly does net zero mean? So put simply, net zero simply refers to the balance between the amount of greenhouse gas we put into the atmosphere and the amount we remove from the atmosphere. So we kind of say that we've reached net zero when the amount we add to the atmosphere is no more than the amount we take away. But how can we achieve this and why does it matter? And there's lots of controversies, first of all, about whether climate change really is a thing. So here's some data and here's why this is an important issue for all of us. So global average temperatures are now more than two degrees Fahrenheit or more than one degree centigrade higher than in the pre-industrial era. 2016 and 2020 are tied as the warmest years we have ever had on record since world meteorological recordings began.

2:00If recent trends continue, this is going to worsen. It's predicted that global temperatures are going to increase by as much as three to five degrees by 2100. There are really sound NASA experiments that show that our ice sheets are shrinking. Antarctica, for example, has already lost approximately 150 billion tons of ice each year. Glaciers are retreating everywhere around the world. Sea levels have risen eight inches in the last century. And why is this relevant to the transport sector in batteries? So because transport is amongst the most major sources of carbon dioxide emission, electric vehicles are really a very, very crucial part of meeting global goals on climate change and cleaner air. So in general, EVs produce much fewer emissions than conventional vehicles. So decarbonizing transport is an absolute prerequisite to countries meeting climate change commitments. But maximizing gains, getting the maximum gains from the move to electric mobility also means that we have to plan alongside for the end of life of electric vehicles. We have to plan particularly for sustainable and safe end of life management of electric car batteries.

3:14Electric car, the battery of an electric car, because it needs to be so large and so powerful, accounts for the greatest share of production costs of an electric car. The most valuable materials in an electric car are contained within the battery. And the batteries have to be hugely powerful to move a vehicle. They have to have loads of power and capacity. So what we need is planning alongside for sustainable end of life management so that we can get full value from these batteries when they can no longer drive an EV. How big are the numbers? How big are the numbers? You know, what sort of numbers are we thinking of? So the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in the USA estimates that by the end of 2025, we are going to have about 600,000 metric tons globally of waste lithium-ion batteries. The International Energy Agency estimates that by 2030, 11 to 16 million tons of spent EV batteries are going to be discarded after first use.

4:15In the UK alone, which is where I'm based, it's estimated that between 70,000 to 105,000 end of life batteries are going to have to be dealt with by 2025. Now, these are big numbers, particularly given that these are really big and large and powerful batteries. So compared to conventional, you know, traditional lead-acid batteries for traditional vehicles, EV batteries have to be more powerful because they are the primary driver of the vehicle. They are also going to have a shorter lifetime in an automotive. So whereas lead-acid batteries could carry on for many years, EV batteries, because they need so much power, are only expected to last about 8 to 10 years in an electric car. And once they've dropped to around 80% of their original capacity, they're no longer going to be effectively able to provide any traction to vehicles. So we are going to then have to get it out of the car and decide what to do with this battery that has still got 80% of its capacity left.

5:16You know, by far the greatest proportion of EV batteries are lithium-ion batteries. lithium-ion batteries, as we know, is an umbrella term for a variety of very complex chemistries. You know, and they're full of really valuable and critical materials that requires lots of environmentally costly mining activity to source. They contain lots of cobalt and nickel and lithium, all of which have a significant cost to the environment to extract. So, yes, you know, we've got really powerful batteries, and every car manufacturer is trying to make their battery more and more powerful because, you know, that helps sell the car, that gives it greater range. But with greater power, of course, comes greater responsibility. So here's the question that governments need to consider much more carefully than, you know, we've currently done so far. What are we actually going to do with all these large valuable batteries once they retire from an EV, at which time they are still going to have massive amounts of power and capacity left, 80%, in fact, of their power and capacity?

6:16The batteries are not only valuable, they're also potentially very hazardous if they're not disposed of properly. They can be prone to large explosions, they contain toxic chemicals, and they can release some extremely toxic and lethal gases if they explode. In the UK itself, the Environment Services Agency found that about 20% to 25% of waste facility fires in the UK in the last four years were linked to lithium-ion batteries that had been poorly disposed of, you know, where they'd been thrown into the household waste and so on. Presently, of course, these are mostly the small portable lithium-ion batteries that are found in phones and laptops and electronic devices and so on. But when you come in the future to be dealing with the much larger EV batteries, the problem is going to multiply many times if a battery like that is inappropriately disposed of. Mining the critical materials we need to make lithium-ion batteries also has significant environment and human rights impacts. For example, 66% of the world's supply of cobalt.

7:19Now, cobalt is absolutely essential for lithium-ion battery manufacture. And 66% of the world's supply of cobalt comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo. The demand for cobalt has tripled in the last five years. It's then expected to double again. Well, it was expected to double by the end of 2020. COVID's probably changed that a little bit because of its dampening effect on manufacture and markets. But once things start to normalize again, we're going to have a very rapid increase in the demand for cobalt. Extracting cobalt from the Democratic Republic of Congo has been linked to human rights abuses, corruption, environment destruction, and most worryingly, child labor. There are many reports of unregulated or artisanal mining in Congo. Amnesty International reports that children as young as six to seven years are being sent into doing this really hazardous and unprotected mining work just because the demand is so great that parents who are employed in mines are sending their children out into these mines to mine for the cobalt.

8:25In December 2019, there was actually a landmark legal lawsuit filed in Washington, D.C. That case is ongoing at the moment. It was filed against five companies, Apple, Google, Dell, Microsoft, and Tesla. And it was filed on behalf of 14 Congolese families whose children were either killed or severely maimed while mining for cobalt. So the claim that's being made is that all of these companies knew that the cobalt mining is associated with child labor and human rights abuses and yet continue to procure the cobalt. But the point is none of these companies, Apple or Google or Dell or Microsoft or Tesla, are going to be able to carry on their work without the cobalt that they need. So responsible sourcing, there is already worries around how are we going to keep getting supplies of this cobalt? But also, where's this cobalt actually coming from? Do we actually want it where it's coming from? Has it been responsibly sourced? So really, you know, the transition to electric mobility also brings all of these associated worries with it.

9:27How are we getting the materials for it? So policies basically that ensure sustainable and safe managing of these batteries at the end of their first life in an electric car are really crucial, both for the environment, as well as for human health, as well as for environmental justice. We need policies that ensure circular economy goals. In other words, we want policies that ensure that we get maximum value from these batteries before we throw them away. And we want to ensure that all of the rare and critical metals that are contained in them are all recovered through recycling and returned to the production loop. Because the more we can recycle, the less mining, you know, the less new mining we need to do to get materials for producing batteries. So here's the thing, is that in the next five to 10 years is when we're going to start seeing the impact of electric vehicles. When the first generation of EVs start to retire, we're going to have these batteries coming out onto the market, which are no longer good to drive the EV.

10:27So what are our options for managing EVs? You know, we can dispose of them straight away as soon as they use, you know, no use in an EV. Not a very good option because like we said, they contain lots of valuable material, lots of capacity. We want to extract as much from it as we can. So we don't want to just throw them away. The other option is to send them to recycling. A third option is to reuse them in some other form so that you put the other capacity, the remaining capacity to use in a less demanding application. So you could use it for energy storage and so on. But there are problems at all of these stages. So recycling lithium-ion batteries is actually not yet something that we have very good technologies for. Recycling efficiencies are very low at the moment. We're not able to extract. We still haven't perfected how to extract the most valuable materials from lithium-ion batteries. Recycling infrastructure is really much, much less than the demand that we're going to have in five to 10 years.

11:28In the UK, for example, we haven't got any lithium-ion battery recycling infrastructure that's up and running already. People are setting it up now, but it takes a long time to set this up. We haven't got the infrastructure. At the moment, the UK exports, we export most of our batteries to the EU for recycling. But the EU hasn't got enough capacity to continue to take large volumes of batteries that are going to come out onto the market. So there are lots of barriers to recycling. An alternate option that people are looking at is reusing the battery, putting it to some kind of second use. But there are lots of barriers to reuse itself. So, for example, the process of remanufacturing or reusing a battery can be quite hazardous. Again, there isn't, you know, technologies and so on are not, haven't quite reached that stage of perfection. Regulation for reuse is actually very, very poor. In the UK, and indeed in the EU currently, the regulations don't even contain a clear definition of reuse.

12:35There are potential health and safety risks when these batteries are remanufactured. There are risks of explosion, high voltage, gas emissions. And there's also the fact that many batteries are not going to be suitable for reuse once they're finished in an EV. So to reuse a battery, it has to be in a really good state of health. That depends on how it's been used and how the owner has treated the battery. Have they maintained it properly? Have they not run it down into the ground? Have they not overused it? If it has been subjected to very severe use, then batteries cannot be reused. They're too damaged to be safely reused. So they have to be sent directly for recycling. But then we haven't got the infrastructure. So we have all these, you know, really complex dilemmas around how to manage the battery. The other, and also, you know, on the face of it, reuse looks like a really good thing, right? So you've got a battery that's got 80% of its capacity.

13:31Why not use it for something else? But the point is, to make recycling profitable, you need sufficiently large numbers of batteries coming in for recycling, because recycling per se is costly. So the only way that recycling profit is if you've got big volumes of batteries. But if you have large numbers of batteries going into reuse, that's going to reduce the numbers of batteries that come into the recycling industry, which is going to further delay the setting up of recycling infrastructure. So you've got a real reuse recycling dilemma here. What is actually the most effective way of managing lithium-ion batteries? We need far more robust economic data on this. You know, what we need is for some good economic and life cycle analysis of what is the minimum number of batteries that should come into recycling to ensure that recycling remains profitable. Once we know the minimum number that we need for recycling, we then need to work out how do we ensure that we get that number into the recycling facility?

14:31Should governments be really quite draconian and say, you know what, you've got to send 50% of your batteries to recycling. You can only reuse 50% of your batteries. Governments are hesitant to do that, hesitant to do that kind of heavy-handed regulation. Or should governments provide incentives for manufacturers to send some of their batteries to recycling? Whatever the route, it is really important for governments to sit up and take note of the problem and to ensure that they've got all this in place before the batteries start coming in. Because once large, you can't wait until the problem arises. Because once you have large numbers of batteries that have been discarded, you're going to be sitting on a mountain of, you know, really hazardous and explosive battery waste. And it's going to be too late then to start thinking of solutions. So I guess the point that we have tried to make on the Faraday project, which I'm working on, is that now is really the only time that we should be working on this.

15:30You know, two or three years from now, it's going to be far too late to solve the problem. Another really severe problem that we face with EV battery recycling is that many of these batteries were never designed to be recycled. Nobody ever thought of recycling at the point when the battery was manufactured. So some EVs, you know, I'm not going to name names here, but some EVs have batteries that are virtually impossible to take apart, you know, even to physically take apart, leave alone to recycle, because they are held together by really strong and large amounts of adhesive. We have not yet quite figured a way out to just open up the battery packs to access the cells and the materials contained within them. So really important to mandate eco-design for electric vehicle batteries. The best stage to optimize end-of-life management is at the beginning of life, at the design and manufacture stage. Manufacturers should be required to foresee and anticipate the eventual dismantling of the battery.

16:31they should consider, you know, standards for, excuse me, for battery pack assembly so that eventual removal and dismantling becomes easier. So there are, you know, technical people who've suggested various things that can be done, reversible joining, avoiding adhesives to hold cells in place and so on. All of these would be really important ways to make sure that batteries lend themselves to recycling. The other thing that governments, we think, need to do is to give incentives for lithium-ion battery recycling. So at the moment, like I said, the numbers aren't sufficient for it to be profitable. So the support that the industry needs is for governments to back up, you know, their operations to make their operations a bit more profitable. The economic case for LIB recycling facilities is currently not very strong, but it will be much stronger in five to ten years when more batteries come off. But we can't wait for that point to start setting the infrastructure up. So we've got to give them the incentives now.

17:36Things are getting better in the EU. There is a proposal for a whole new set of batteries regulations which are going to tighten up many of these gaps. We don't quite know when these new proposals are going to come into force. We in the UK, of course, will no longer automatically be following EU regulation. So we've got to chart our own path. In the US, things seem to vary. So regulations where recycling of batteries is concerned tends to vary a lot from state to state. Some states do really well at ensuring, you know, robust targets for recycling, at putting a bit more responsibility on battery manufacturers, you know, to make their batteries recyclable. But not all states follow this. So there are really several gaps and uncertainties. Transportation costs of lithium-ion batteries are huge. That adds another, you know, huge layer of cost to recycling. We need more streamlined procedures. We need more smart regulation to facilitate waste flows to support the end-of-life management of lithium-ion batteries.

18:39What we really need, I guess, all around the world at the moment is legislation that can balance innovation with environment and safety concerns. So, you know, we don't want to suggest that innovation isn't important or innovation is a bad thing, but it needs to be balanced with environment and safety considerations. We need to prioritize minimizing harm to the environment and harm to human health. So that really is the sort of thing that we were working on in the Faraday project. What policy interventions should consider in helping to build a more circular economy for EV batteries? Thank you very much for listening and I'd be really happy to take any questions or comments. Thank you so much for your introductory bit. It's been, it was so comprehensive, so I really appreciated the full overview. Yes, everyone, please feel free to raise your hands. Click the hand at the bottom of your screen. I believe that's where it is. Feel free to ask questions. I will, Simon or I will call on you, but to get things started, I can throw a question out there.

19:53You know, right at the end, you started talking a bit about regulations and different jurisdictions, and I believe this is the first time we've had someone join us who, you know, has a little bit more of that regulatory expertise, actually full expertise that you have. You mentioned a few regions. Are there any pieces of regulation or policy globally that you think are good examples of what we could or couldn't, what we should be doing? Yes. So we get asked this question all the time, you know, nowadays, and while there have been, you know, individual pockets of maybe promising, you know, potential incentives, we haven't come across anybody yet who's managed to crack it in that sense, who's managed to completely find the answer. So there have been some people, so for example, Germany recently fined Tesla, I think they were fined 14 million euros or something, for not complying with recycling requirements. I'm not quite sure whether they, last I heard they were in the process of appealing that, but lots of governments are now, only now, starting to look into their enforcement regimes.

21:05You know, how good are we at even auditing the recycling data? How good are we at enforcing these obligations? How good are our obligations themselves? How robust are they? Now, at the moment in the EU, there aren't very strong regulations where recycling is concerned. All of batteries regulation is actually still dependent on a set of directives that were drawn up in 2006 so those regulations were never written with EVs in mind because nobody thought of EVs in 2006. There are no specific obligations on EV manufacturers. an EV battery hasn't even got a separate classification currently in the EU. It's just classified as an industrial battery just by default because there is, you know, no category for EV batteries. So, for industrial batteries in the EU, manufacturers have no specific targets to collect their batteries or to recycle them. The only obligation that EV manufacturers have is that if any customer brings the battery back to them and says, we want you to take back this battery because we don't want it anymore and we don't know what to do with it, they have to take it back.

22:18So, it's called a take-back obligation but apart from having to take back any battery that a customer wants to return, there's no onus on any EV battery manufacturer to collect their batteries back or make sure that the batteries come back. That's very different for portable battery manufacturers. Portable battery manufacturers actually have, so, these would be the small lithium-ion batteries that are around in, you know, your laptops and smartphones but they have a target where people have to bring, they have to collect a minimum amount of the batteries they sell. So, it's ironical really that the much larger EV batteries have no collection target at the moment. So, the reason why countries aren't able to do a lot is because the regulations haven't kept pace with electric cars. That is going to change in the next year or two but the rate of change needs to be much speedier than it is. So, no, to answer your question, Bhavya, unfortunately, we haven't found anywhere that's managed to work this problem out.

23:17China is trying to go into EVs, you know, there's a very big push towards EV transitions however, you know, and this is the other complexity with EVs, the only reason why EVs are cleaner than normal cars is because they use electricity rather than, you know, gas and coal and so on to run. But whether it's actually cleaner or not depends on where the electricity comes from. So, if you have clean renewable sources of electricity, then yes, you are going to see much cleaner air and a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. But for some countries, coal seems to be the primary source of electricity, you know, which itself isn't a clean source at all. And so, in China, even though China is moving to electrifying transport in a big way, data from 2020 suggests that their greenhouse gas emissions actually increased because what they haven't done is to find cleaner sources of producing the electricity that runs the electric vehicles. So, all of that needs to go hand in hand.

24:21And in some ways, EVs have come out onto the market, but all the background work that makes sure that they deliver perhaps hasn't been looked at quite so carefully. Thank you so much. I will start calling on some folks who have joined us here on the stage. Maggie, feel free to ask your questions. Good morning. Yeah, I'm not sure I have a question, just a couple of comments. Anyone who's listened to me on here knows I'm a big proponent for design for manufacturing to drive costs down, but I'm also really big into design for sustainability and anything we use in this economy really has to, the sustainability and recyclability has to be considered. Big proponent of second life batteries, if we can get these batteries into things that aren't moving people, your regulations come down a little bit and your flexibility and where to put them, becomes bigger. So, not really a question, just love this talk, loved your talk and thank you for all the information.

25:27Thank you. No, and that's a really good point you made about second use. The first and most crucial point, of course, is the design for manufacture. The only way that people would start to design for manufacture is if they have really robust targets where recycling is concerned. Otherwise, there's no incentive for manufacturers. Why would they spend their effort designing something for recycling if they're never actually going to be called on to account for the recycling? So, once they have targets, let's say even if they're told that you have to ensure that 80% of the batteries that you produce come back into recycling, it would automatically give them a reason to make sure their batteries are recyclable so they are designed for recycling. That doesn't exist in most places that we know of yet. With second use, I completely agree with you. Second use is a fantastic way to get maximum value out of batteries. Our only slight worry about second use for EVs only in this particular sector is that, you know, the worry that it's going to further delay recycling infrastructure because it's going to reduce the numbers that come in for recycling.

26:32So, that is perhaps something that we need better economic data on. Is that going to impact on the recycling industry? But yeah, absolutely. crucial points out of them, the points you raise. Thank you for that. Thanks so much. Next up, we have Melos. Yes, I wonder what kind of technologies we have and how much materials we are able to recover back from the batteries. and I think that's the cost of recovering back those materials because I think that's the direction where we should go. Basically, if it's going to be cheaper to recover the materials from the recycled batteries, then the mine and process them. So, I think the market will solve the problem by itself. Yep. Yep. Absolutely. That's a brilliant point. So, the project that I work for, it's called the Faraday Project and it's a government-funded project in the UK. We are the only legal people on the project. The whole project primarily consists of scientists, you know, chemists and metallurgists and so on.

27:49And the reason the government has funded them is for them to build the recycling, to kind of better innovate recycling technologies. You know, that's what they've been tasked to do. Processes at the moment are really not very efficient for lithium-ion battery manufacturing. So, you've got two different routes. I'm not a technical person, so I'm only going to kind of be able to give you the very bare bones of the technical details that I know of. But you have either the hydrometallurgical route or the pyrometallurgical route for, you know, recycling lithium-ion batteries. The best recycling efficiency that anybody's been able to achieve so far is around 50%. And when we say 50%, a large amount of that which is recycled is actually not the valuable, you know, metals contained in them, but it's the casing and the packaging and the plastic and so on. So we are, because of process and scientific limitations, we're actually losing a lot of the critical material. But what the scientists are working on at the moment is how to improve the processes so that we can recover, you know, the most critical materials we want and how we can improve recycling efficiencies.

28:57So the hope is that in another five years, the processes are a lot better than they are now. At the moment, it is more costly to recycle the batteries. You know, the net costs of putting the batteries in for recycling is slightly greater than the net gain. And that's also because the numbers of batteries aren't enough. In five years time, when the numbers of batteries increase, it's quite likely that there will be a slight increase in profitability. If that's accompanied by better processes and more recycling efficiencies, that is going to hugely improve the profitability of recycling. But yeah, absolutely everything depends on getting the science right and the process right. Our worry is... Yeah, can I... Yeah, yeah. I'm sorry. Continue. No, no, carry on. I, one comment. I think that we are a little bit lucky because we have like, in my estimation, like 10 years because those batteries which... We have like 10 years to the science to evolve and the efficiency of the recovering the materials to bring them back and the cost of the recovery of recycling to go down.

30:13Why? Because those batteries which we are producing today, they will come to the market, to the recycling at least 10 years from now. So it will be 2000... Last year we had 200 gigawatt hours of the battery production. Basically in 2030 something, we will have 200 gigawatt hours of the batteries for the recycling. So I'm saying that I hope... I'm a big pre-market proponent means that I think and I hope that the market will solve itself. If the battery... If recovering the materials from the batteries will be cheaper than producing them from the mining and from the... from the processing, so it will be good business to recycle those batteries batteries. And this way we will solve them. Sure. Sure. And I think that's the hope on which governments have rested, you know, and that's the hope on which they've kind of rolled out lots of EVs and perhaps thought that we don't need to worry about the batteries because like you say, the hope is that the market will sort itself out.

31:29I guess... I don't know what it's like in the US. I mean, I guess we are speaking primarily for the UK. But in the UK, setting up lithium-ion battery infrastructure, setting up a recycling facility for lithium-ion batteries is a hugely complex and costly and lengthy process. So if I woke up tomorrow morning and said, you know what, I want to set up a recycling plant, the estimate is that by the time I've negotiated all of the forms and got the permits and got all of the planning permissions I need, it could be anywhere between one to two years before I can be up and running. It may be that it's different in the US, but this is what we estimate in the UK based on our studies and our conversations with battery manufacturers. I guess our worry is if we wait for the market to sort it out without incentives, you're going to be in a situation five years from now where you have lots of batteries that need dealing with and infrastructure that is one to two years away.

32:29So this is a mountain of hazardous waste that we're going to be sitting on for one to two years. Not knowing what to do with it. We actually had this in the UK once. So this was about two or three decades ago. It was called the fridge mountain, you know, where people were banned. They banned export refrigerators because they can release toxic gases. Used to be shipped out, you know, for dealing with when people wanted to throw them away. They would be shipped out to other countries. And then suddenly the EU banned the exportation of old refrigerators, right, with very little notice. what happened in the UK was nobody had the facilities or infrastructure to deal with those refrigerators. So in a part of the north of England, they developed what was called a big massive fridge mountain, a big pile of refrigerators that were releasing these toxic gases. But we weren't ready for this to happen because nobody had thought to build the infrastructure first before building the regulation.

33:25I guess our only worry is how do we find ways of avoiding that scenario? Eventually, in the long term, I completely agree with you, the market will sort itself out. But should governments give recyclers some incentive now to start setting up the facilities even if the profit isn't there for another four or five years? That's the question, you know, we are kind of mulling over. But yeah, I completely agree with you. Usually, you can rely on the market to sort it out. I'm just worried about over regulating the recycling of the batteries if it will not kill the recycling of the batteries. Because it has the tendency to kill. So in the US, I've heard about the technologies like Redwood Materials and other companies, they're claiming they can recycle 95% of the batteries. Oh, wow. Wow. We haven't heard of those processes yet. But yes, we must find out more about it then if that is what they're claiming. I completely agree with you. And I think...

34:32I worry... Yeah, no, go ahead. Go ahead. They don't have enough material to recycle. They don't have enough batteries to recycle so they cannot be profitable now because there is not enough batteries. Sure, sure. Exactly that. And that's exactly our point. So we're not actually wanting governments to regulate or impose penalties. What we'd like governments to do is to support recyclers by giving them incentives, by easing their way for the next couple of years, you know, even if there aren't a lot of profits. So we don't want them to penalize. We perhaps think a better way is to dangle a carrot rather than a stick. Yeah, yeah. Last comment toward that. You are right. Government could be part of the solution or part of the problem. You are saying that if the government is part of the solution, that's fine. Yeah, thanks. No, fair enough. Fair enough. And I completely see your point. You know, heavy-handed regulation doesn't help anything. You know, it's not the way to get things to the place where we want them to be.

35:39But incentives certainly can do that without the heavy-handedness and without the downsides. Yeah. One more point outside of that a little bit, but it's related. In next 10 years, we need huge increase in the materials for the batteries. It means that there is huge pressure for the materials of the batteries because we need to produce at least 10 times more batteries in 2030, according to Tesla, 100 times more batteries in 2030. So 100 times more batteries in 2030 means 100 times more material. So where we are going to take this material? So one source of this material is recycled batteries. Absolutely. Absolutely. And that's why it's so crucial to get batteries into the recycling loop. And that is the one reason why we are concerned about reuse. Because if you put batteries into second use, that's going to mean that it's another added 10 to 15 years before we can actually start to get the materials out of them. And that means another 10 to 15 years of mining activity to get the cobalt and to get the nickel and to get the lithium.

36:54But yeah, absolutely. Your point is spot on. That is a real worry. I hope, I hope, my background is steel industry. So I hope, like, the industry will evolve to the steel industry where we are recovering 100% of the steel. So 100% of the steel is recycled back to the steel. So basically, maybe, most probably technologically is possible. I don't know how many years and how much science it will take. But I hope, or I can kind of see that it is possible 100% of the batteries to recover. Absolutely. Absolutely. You know, if EVs, if lithium-ion batteries had sufficient time, they would have perfected it. Even with lead-acid batteries, you know, it's very much like your steel industry. Because lead-acid batteries of traditional cars have been around for so long, we've now able to recover, like, we have a recycling efficiency of 96% to 97% for lead-acid batteries. Sadly, lithium-ion batteries are lagging behind because they're so new. And we need some solutions to prevent a disaster in the short term.

38:07Yeah, but fortunately, we have those new technologies, which I hear almost each day about them, how to recover more and how to recover, how to recycle those batteries, less expensive. Yeah, yeah. Great point. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Mylos, for this really engaging also back and forth. And I mean, maybe one thing also, before we go to Gareth, the next person, I'm quite curious about these numbers, right? Because I think it's, yeah, it's something quite interesting. And, you know, I think these, especially like numbers or percentage of, you know, recycling efficiency as well as also like, you know, overall number of recycled batteries. Because, yeah, I mean, you know, I think also Mylos mentioned as well, I think, you know, from an industrial standpoint, we have quite a few companies, right, who are claiming to have at least 95%, you know, in Europe or Asia and others. So I'm quite curious also, like, you know, where would you get your numbers from? Is it like from a, you know, is it like independent studies or like, you know, is it working with the companies together?

39:08So one of the sources of our data, so the UK, as I said, you know, this is where I'm based and this is the market we've primarily been studying. We have dealt with lithium-ion batteries by exporting them to the EU for recycling. The largest of these facilities is a recycling company called Umicore. They are the largest of the EU facilities for lithium-ion battery recycling. And the 50% recycling efficiency was the data that they had published. So within the EU, they are amongst the foremost recyclers. And this is the data that they have on the recycling efficiencies that they are able to achieve from lithium-ion batteries. This is data that was accurate, of course, in the middle of 2020. But I must, you know, perhaps get in touch with you later to find out where these next 95%, we've heard of nothing close to that over here. So, so what, you know, what's going on there? Yes. Those data, those data, because it's, uh, this recycling is very new.

40:14So those data are closely held by the technologies, the companies, they, uh, which, uh, they own those technologies. Sure. But they will not allow any independent, because it's most, it's most of those processes are not yet commercialized. Sure. So basically, uh, those data are very uncertain. They are coming from the companies, which they are, uh, building the technologies. Uh, and that, that's what I told you I've heard, but I don't, I cannot believe because, uh, that's not proven that. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And that's the difficulty, isn't it? We, we're talking about something which is evolving as we talk, you know, the, the technologies are kind of, there's probably thousands of people working in the labs as we speak, you know, on improving these technologies. But until the data is actually published and out there, we have to go by what is actually published and demonstrated. So that's what we've got on record. That's the best we could find. Interesting. And I agree with you. I think that the big issue is that numbers are not really transparent and there's like a lot of outdated information.

41:18And then there's like one publication, which has one number and everyone cites it and without like really checking. And there's also like a lot of numbers just floating around, right? I think can be on either end. And it's, it's a big issue. I agree. It is. Gareth, maybe just I hope it's not. Yeah. I'm sorry. One more point. I hope it's not going to be like the battery, battery transparency in the battery research in the new battery, new technologies for the batteries. Basically, everybody is exaggerating. Everybody is hoping and everybody is hype. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Sometimes a lot of these numbers are, you know, it's a bit of smoke and mirrors, isn't it? You don't quite know what's behind some of it until it's fully transparent and out there. Brilliant. Thanks. Thanks, Milo's interview. I think there's many other people who raised their hand in the meantime. So let's go to Gareth next. Hi there. Hi. It's Gareth from London. Yeah. Thank you for all the insights.

42:27My first comment is I'd love to have some links to all those things that's been mentioned because, you know, voice is great to connect, but yeah, data and some links to article and research and your project would be great. Sure. And my question is really, I think, I think we need to bear in mind, you know, the difference of regulations, enforcement, you know, and the reality of all of these, right? Because, you know, it's great that there is this Faraday project, but I think by the time you guys done the study, by the time it's adopted, by the time it becomes some kind of, you know, regulations or, you know, I think it might, you know, it might not be quick enough. So, so, so I'm just hoping that there may be some kind of incentive for battery and EV car manufacturers to work together because, you know, to, to create some, some kind of standards that can, you know, you know, battery cells that, that, that could be easily recyclable.

43:37I mean, would that be the next phase or is that part of your, your project? Because, you know, I'm quite worried about, you know, all this push of, you know, un-recyclable, you know, batteries, you know, you know, getting manufactured now. Thanks. No, that's a really good point. That is a very good point. And what has happened in the last year is that they have been working on a set of standards for the battery industry, you know, largely focusing on EV battery design. So, so what they've done, the, this is an EU initiative, but it also will apply in the UK because most of the UK's car market is actually the EU. 80% of the cars manufactured in the UK are sold abroad. 60% of the cars manufactured in the UK are actually sold in the EU. So UK and EU regulations are going to want to align anyway, even if they don't have to because of Brexit. So what's really happened recently is that the EU has developed a set of standards over the last year, working with some people on our project, which will hopefully, you know, advocate for eco design, for better design batteries that can be dismantled and disassembled and recycled more easily.

44:58The problem with standards is standards are not usually enforceable. Standards are not law. So you can have a set of standards for battery manufacture and it is good for battery manufacturers to comply with the standards because it makes them look good and it improves the image of their company. But you can't actually penalize somebody for not adhering to. So these are, these are called PAS standards, publicly accessible standards. They are not enforceable standards. We have only come so far as to have a voluntary set of standards for battery manufacture, but there is no penalty if they don't comply with it. I would agree with you. I think we need much more robust standards that all companies have to adhere to. There are some car manufacturers that are particularly, you know, less concerned about recycling. others seem to be doing much better at making batteries that are easier to recycle. But I would certainly agree with you. We need a level playing field because obviously the manufacturers that focus on range and power and ignore recyclability are going to see greater profits in the short term.

46:08It also takes away the level playing field for those who are focusing on recycling. But yes, I absolutely agree with your point. What we need is an enforceable set of standards. I think enforceable is a key point, but I think it's, I know people at WWTO, even enforceable, by the time, you know, we go into adjudication, you know, it will be already, you know, very polluted. I think we must learn from the experience of, you know, like the Ganges River, right? I mean, it's a mother river for the Indian subcontinent. It's so polluted, no one cares anymore, right? So that's what I'm really kind of worried about in the sense that the position for EV manufacturers now are, you know, power and range, as you mentioned. And I think that narrative should be moved to, you know, how to kind of create an ecosystem that some of you guys have already mentioned, you know, namely how many batteries could be produced, you know, based on the raw material.

47:23And then also how much, you know, the infrastructure, you know, could produce renewable energy for all these number of EV cars. Absolutely. I don't think there's any studies. Absolutely. A study on that, right? Absolutely. Absolutely. No one even asked those questions. No, absolutely. And like I said, China is a great example in point. So China has actually gone for electrified transport in a big way. But the 2020 data shows that their greenhouse gas emissions actually increased because the electricity that the EVs were being powered by is not coming from clean sources. So it's worsened the problem. And so, yes, absolutely. It's really complex. And we need. Because at least that is, yeah, the only worry around reuse. I agree with Yoti. I agree with Yoti. I'm not big promoter of the second use of the batteries because that creates also another problems and especially delays the recycling of the batteries. Great. Let's think. We're just about one hour in now. Time flies as usual. So we have about 30 minutes left.

48:46We've got a few more people also on stage. And there might also be some more who want to join. This is just a quick reset of the room. Today, you know, we have our weekly battery evolution session, the 17th. Today, we have Yoti with us. We'll give his work with the Faraday Institute and has given a really fascinating overview of battery regulation and recycling and also touched on second use as well. And, yeah, also today, Bavi and I are co-hosting. And, yeah, also one quick thing is on the top, you can see the little red button, which says that we're recording this because we record them also for all the people who don't have an iPhone and cannot use Clubhouse. So if you want to find the recording, you can also go on batteryinsiders.com. And in case you don't want to be included, you can also write us a message. Free to connect on LinkedIn. We can cut it out. No problem as well. Great.

49:33Maybe let's go to Ross next. Ross, are you with us? Otherwise, we can also come back to you later and go to Edwin. Edwin, are you here? Yes. Hello. Do you hear me? Yes. We can hear you. Okay. Thank you. Well, first, I want to thank you for your extended view on the topic. It's very interesting. Personally, I'm very optimistic that we can solve this recycling puzzle. As Marius already said, we have some time because the batteries that come on the market today will at least last for 10 years. And I think that's... And maybe that's even longer because, in my opinion, when the first EVs came to the market, maybe in 2013 with the Tesla Model S as one of the first fully battery EVs, we tended to say that the batteries lasted at least 150,000 kilometers and then needed to be recycled. But now we see that these batteries still haven't been recycled because now we think that they last at least 600,000 to maybe 800,000 kilometers.

51:04So we're basically extending the use. And what we also see is that underdevelopment are these 1 million miles batteries. And we also see that the solar state batteries will come to the market in a couple of years from now. And the second thing I want to add is that we all thought that the EV batteries, the first EV batteries from the first generation EVs, that they will have a second life in home batteries, extending the life even more. Because, yeah. And so maybe we are, I mean, where is the point when there is enough volume to start developing battery recycling services of businesses? I mean, I can build a factory for recycling tomorrow, but I mean, it will cost undoubtedly a lot of money. But when is the point that it is feasible? I'm looking for that period. Is that 10 years from now? Is that 15 years from now? Is that 20 years from now? I was also briefly looking to the website of Northvolt.

52:43Northvolt is building a large factory to develop EV batteries. And already on the website, they stated that by 2030, 50% of all materials will come from recycled batteries, they say. And I think that a lot of battery factories, which are built nowadays, they will also have, they will use materials from recycled batteries. So my question is a little bit, what's your opinion about what's going on? And can we solve this puzzle? And my second question is maybe, would it be a good thing to propose adding a recycling fee on new electric cars so you can fund the recycling business? It's a little bit like, at least I'm calling in from the Netherlands now. And when I buy a new refrigerator or TV, I have to pay some extra euros for the recycling cost already. Yeah. Okay. So all of those are million dollar questions. I think really good questions. The recycling fee is the one that I would be the most wary about. And I'll tell you why.

54:09It's because what most studies seem to indicate is that one of the biggest barriers to the uptake of EVs is the cost. Right. So already electric cars are much more costly to buy than to buy a traditional internal combustion engine vehicle. So that's one of the biggest reasons that people say they won't be buying an EV yet. It's too costly for them to do so. It's indeed one of the big criticisms of, so the UK, for example, is looking to phase out the sale of all new ICE vehicles by 2030. The reason why this has been criticized is because what's going to happen to people who can't afford an EV? If you add another layer of cost to an electric car, if we're thinking the cost should be borne by the consumer or the purchaser, it's only going to further delay the uptake of EVs. And it's going to be a huge obstacle in the move to electric mobility. If governments would be willing to take that cost on, and I can't see any governments, particularly post-pandemic, being keen to take on any additional costs for anything, then that might be feasible.

55:23I mean, the general sort of legal rule in the UK is that the cost for responsible management of something should fall on those who make the profit from that process. So the logical thing seems to suggest that that share of recycling costs should be borne by the manufacturers of the vehicles or the batteries, not the consumer, because that's going to hugely delay our move to electric mobility. I don't know what people's thoughts are on this, but this would certainly be what we would be most worried about in the UK, is that a lot of people are going to be left out of the EV revolution unless the costs come down. If we make them go up any further, then we're going to be in a lot of trouble. If you allow me, I would just disagree with that point, because you mentioned the deadline of 2030 for the ban of ICE. And, you know, currently, we're quickly reaching parity in terms of cost, of acquisition cost between EVs and ICEs, you know, including the incentives, the current incentives of £3,500 in the UK.

56:31we would be pretty much at parity today, and we expect to be at parity at least by 2024, 2025. So one would expect that by the end of the decade, we would actually have electric cars that are affordable to everyone, and at least, you know, the same price as ICEs. Yes, but you are right, but the cost of any technological development, scientific development, and commercialization of those technologies cannot be mandated, cannot be regulated. So it's going to be only done by the free market. Basically, the companies, like the companies, the best companies for the recycling, the cheapest companies for the recycling, who will be able to make money on that, they will solve the problem. And I kind of, not hope, I kind of see it already, that the problem will be solved until it will be a bigger problem, and we will recycle close to 100% of the batteries back to the materials from which we will produce batteries. No, this is all very interesting.

57:48It's all future projections. So yes, you know, I mean, any guess could be as good as the other. You know, we can only kind of estimate on the basis of what we know now and things might change. The government grant, by the way, the 3,500 grant you mentioned for purchasing EVs is now, has been reduced. It's been slashed down. It has been decreased to 2,500, which was announced in last month's budget by the Chancellor. So there's going to be less support available now for buying an EV than there was. But there will at least be support until we reach parity, excluding those grants. So by 2024, one would expect that we would be in that position. Let's hope. Let's hope. Yeah. Yeah, we are already close to parity. We are already close to parity of the electrical vehicles and the batteries are going still down. So I don't have doubt in my mind that we will reach parity very well. Yeah, I personally think that parity is already happening in the UK, Sweden, Norwegian, and the Netherlands.

58:56So I don't think that's a real issue. And that has also to do with that fuels are relatively, have a high cost in these countries. Sure. Sure. Yeah, if you take a look at what the market forces are doing to the question on incentives for recycling, Lifecycle, for example, has just raised 600 million U.S. dollars through a reverse merger here in the United States to expand its capabilities. Redwood Materials, of course, 40 plus million dollars from its backers, including Amazon. So what these companies are currently doing is they're filling their pipelines with consumer lithium-ion batteries and electronics. So that's what they're using as their feedstock right now. And they're developing their technologies. Certainly the UICORM number that Yodi mentioned, that's straight pyrometallurgy, which has been around. The 95% is, in fact, hydrometallurgy. And that really has not been scaled to any significant extent, but that's what Lifecycle, that's what Umicore, that's what Brumpf in China, the largest recycler in the world, all of them are moving towards hydrometallurgy to hit those 95%.

1:00:27That's right. Not cost-effective at this point, not scaled, but certainly those are the processes. The chemistry is understood. It's simply a question of investment to scale that. And so as you take a look at how we're going to get there, we'll get there through consumer batteries. The other key feedstock that nobody's really mentioned is the scrap for the waste from the battery plants themselves. The Panasonic plant in Sparks, Nevada, for example, the Altium plants that's going to be coming on in the U.S., all the other plants, they generate a significant amount of scrap. And those recyclers want that scrap because it's high concentration of the valuable materials. And if they can get that scrap, that will certainly enable them to be able to cost-effectively operate. But to your point previously, that feedstock is a key aspect of it. So consumer batteries and scrap from our plants are going to be the initial feedstocks until we start seeing end-of-life batteries then make their way back into the system.

1:01:40Sure. Sure. And like you said, and I think somebody made this point previously as well, is that those 95%, those reported efficiencies, are they for a specific kind of battery? Would that equally lend itself to some of the more complicated EV batteries that we've tried to look at? The cylindrical cell batteries, the batteries held together with adhesive, are they going to be able to approach anything like that? If you take a look at the processes, and I've studied the process of how you actually do comminution, which is grinding up the battery, it's chemistry agnostic. Right. So it grinds it up, and then you create this black mass material, which is the key component. Right. And then the black mass then goes through the hydrometallurgical process. Now, to the point, though, the value in the feedstock composition, though, does impact the profitability. Whether or not you're running NMC versus LFP through that mix has a big impact on the profitability of the plant. So you need some degree of, let's say, cobalt in the mix.

1:02:49Sure. Running a plant straight on LFP, for example, in that mix, you know, makes it less profitable. Sure. So, you know, the process itself is agnostic to the chemistry, but the profitability at the end of the day comes out on what are the constituent metals in that mix. Indeed. Indeed. And that's where one thing can also conflict with the other. You see, and you mentioned the cobalt, but there is this huge pressure to move towards low cobalt chemistries, which, you know, perhaps from a sustainability point of view is a good thing because of what we know goes on in the sourcing of that cobalt. But also, as you rightly mentioned, cobalt is one of the most valuable materials for recyclers. If you move to low cobalt chemistries, is that going to further impact the profitability of recycling? Is that going to, you know, just be another disincentive to set up recycling infrastructure? Yeah, if you take a look at the metals, Yoti, I mean, cobalt certainly is at the top of the list of what you want.

1:03:48Nickel is coming in next now as value. Sure. As you look to replace nickel with more manganese, let's say, then it becomes less valuable so you can see how, again, the metals prices impact us. And, of course, the lithium is going to become more valuable as time goes on, which is the most difficult of the minerals to, again, recover in the process. So market prices will dictate, you know, what the profitability of these plants are. But to your point early on, again, feedstock is absolutely the key, you know, going forward for these companies that are putting in these plants and making the investments ahead of the curve. Yeah. Oops. I think you've muted yourself. Yeah, no, that was my point, really, is that. Thank you for that. No, that's really interesting and, you know, a really valuable point. And we should perhaps kind of look into that a little bit more closely into... Yeah, what Ross said, it's true that we already have processes to recycle some batteries already commercialized.

1:05:09This hydrometallurgical process, I don't know if it's going to be dominant one, but right now we have this hydrometallurgical process, so technologically we are able to recover 95% of the materials. It's a matter of the feedstock and matter of the cost and matter of the volume. Thank you so much for fielding all these questions. We do have about 10 minutes left, Jyoti, so, and to everybody else, if anybody else wants to jump on last minute, get one question in, keep it brief, we're happy to do so. But looking at who's on the stage right now, I would like to call on Kevin. Kevin, do you have any questions or comments? Yeah, so I think in response to the recycling feed, I think it really depends on two questions. One is that what is our view on the spent batteries? Another thing is that who's responsibility to recycle the spent batteries? And in China currently, how to profit from the recycling spent batteries? I think a good business model is that we use the materials recovered from the spent batteries as the raw materials for the battery precursor materials production and maybe in other applications.

1:06:38If the quality recovered from the batteries is not as high as expected, it. At the early stage, about 10 years ago, at that stage, not so many recyclers on the market in China. So basically, the recyclers, they were able to get the spent batteries for free. But when more and more recyclers came into play in the market and the recyclers had to pay to get the spent batteries, you know, so it became more valuable. And another thing we covered is about the second use and recycling. In my opinion, it really depends on which one is more profitable. So if one, I think, you know, because the whole industry is developing very fast in both areas, and we have more and more batteries coming at the end of life. So if it is more profitable, I guess more batteries will go to that area and also vice versa. Yeah. And the third part is that I would like to say, yeah, we should be critical about the announcements of the companies or what is claimed in the report.

1:08:01Because, for example, there are loads of the studies about the comparison of the pyro and the hydro method for the recycling. And I do see some of the companies because they have experience in the pyro way of the recycling of the batteries. So I guess they just on purpose they just to find some of the research to support their way of recycling. But it may not well reflected what is going on in the recycling industry in reality. Yeah. That's my opinion. Indeed. Now, those are all really valuable points, Kevin. And I think the devil is in the detail with a lot of these things, isn't it? It's very difficult to draw conclusions until we actually know the detail and we don't get the detail most of very frequently when it comes to commercial. With your point about the fact that recycling versus reuse is ultimately going to depend on which is more profitable, I guess, yes, if we left the market to shape itself, then profitability is going to be the key factor that determines whether batteries go for recycling or reuse.

1:09:23I guess the question we are trying to pose is given that we are dealing with something so hazardous, so unknown, and given that we really do need to develop a recycling infrastructure, should we leave it entirely to the market or should governments intervene to incentivize one route or the other a little bit? When it comes to reuse, the simple fact is that even if we went in for widespread reuse, not every retired EV battery is going to be suitable for reuse. It's only the batteries in the very best state of health that are going to be suitable for reuse. So even if we went in for widespread reuse, you are still going to need some recycling of those batteries that are in too poor a state of health. If we don't have the recycling infrastructure, what's going to happen to the damaged lithium-ion batteries, which could be likely to be one-third of the batteries perhaps, that are not going to be suitable for second use.

1:10:22So if we left the market to shape itself and recycling isn't profitable as a result, we simply aren't going to have the recycling infrastructure. Where are we going to go with that bunch of retired batteries that can't be reused? Our second concern about reuse is, home energy storage systems, domestic storage systems. There's a lot of safety concerns around that. Again, I don't know how it is in every jurisdiction. In the UK at the moment, I could get a used battery out of my EV. I could Google how to install it in my house as a home energy storage system. I could put it under my stairs as a home energy storage system. There are no clear regulations around how to install it properly, how to maintain it properly, or indeed how to use it properly. The potential for this to blow up under my stairs at any point without proper regulation is potentially catastrophic, not just to me, but also to my innocent neighbors, to people passing by who might inhale the fumes from it.

1:11:35So there are worries, and I think the question I guess we're putting out there is, when it comes to something like this, should we leave it entirely to the market to shape itself, or does there need to be some more kind of governance of it?