More recycled battery materials – cobalt, lithium, manganese and nickel – will come from the electric cars (EV) stock and planned battery gigafactories across Europe. This represents an enormous opportunity for the EU and the UK to source materials locally and sustainably, but strong policies will be needed to make this happen.

T&E’s new analysis finds that:

• End-of-Life batteries and scrap from battery gigafactories in Europe have potential to provide 14% of all lithium, 16% of nickel, 17% of manganese, and a quarter of cobalt demand by 2030 already.
  
• These materials will be enough to build between 1.3 and 2.4 million EVs locally in 2030, up to 10 mln in 2035, and up to 15 mln EVs by 2040.
  
• The expected volumes of locally recycled secondary materials will be more than enough to meet the recycled content targets for lithium, nickel and cobalt in the new EU Battery regulation.
  
• The locally recycled battery materials can also replace the need for primary ores, avoiding the need to build 12 new mines globally by 2040 (4 lithium, 3 nickel, 4 cobalt, and 1 manganese mine of average size).
  
• Recycling lithium in Europe can save almost a fifth of CO₂ compared to lithium being extracted from spodumene in Australia and refined in China.

Today, Europe is not ready to capture the resilience and sustainability potential from battery recycling.

But despite this considerable potential, today neither the EU nor the UK are ready to capture this opportunity. The existing recycling capacity across Europe is 10 times below where it needs to be in 2030, or in 5 years time. Over 30 material recovery projects have been announced or are being built, but due to higher energy costs, lack of mature technical expertise or financial support almost half of the capacity announced is either on hold or not certain to go ahead.