The future of mobility and its critical raw materials

Waste Management & Research: The Journal for a Sustainable Circular Economy

The global market for battery electric vehicles (BEVs) is continuously increasing which results in higher material demand for the production of Li-ion batteries (LIBs). Therefore, the end of life (EOL) of batteries must be handled properly through reusing or recycling to minimize the supply chain issues in future LIBs. This study analyses the global distribution of EOL lithium nickel manganese cobalt (NMC) oxide batteries from BEVs. The Stanford estimation model is used, assuming that the lifespan of NMC batteries follows a Weibull distribution. The global sales data of NMC batteries from 2009 to 2018 were collected and the sales data from 2019 to 2030 were estimated based on historical trends and BEV development plans in the top 10 countries for BEV sales. The result shows a view of EOL NMC batteries worldwide. In 2038, China, South Korea and the United States (US) will be the three leading countries in the recovery of NMC battery materials. An overall global flow of NMC battery ma...

Nature Sustainability, 2020

The wide adoption of lithium-ion batteries used in electric vehicles (EVs) will require increased natural resources for the automotive industry. The expected rapid increase in batteries could result in new resource challenges and supply chain risks. To strengthen the resilience and sustainability of automotive supply chains and reduce primary resource requirements, circular economy strategies are needed. Here we illustrate how these strategies can reduce primary raw material extraction i.e. cobalt supplies. Material flow analysis is applied to understand current and future flows of cobalt embedded in EVs batteries across the European Union. A reference scenario is presented and compared with four strategies: technology driven substitution and technology driven reduction of cobalt, new business models to stimulate battery reuse/recycling and policy driven strategy to increase recycling. We find that new technologies provide the most promising strategies to reduce the reliance on cobalt significantly but could result in burden shifting such as an increase in nickel demand. To avoid the latter, technological developments should therefore be combined with an efficient recycling system. We conclude that more ambitious circular economy strategies, at both government and business levels, are urgently needed to address current and future resource challenges across the supply chain successfully.

Electric batteries and Critical Materials Dependency: a Geopolitical Analysis of the USA and the European Union, 2023

This article estimates the import dependency of the USA and the European Union on the raw materials needed to produce batteries that equip Electric Vehicles. The dependency is very high on many critical materials and on batteries themselves. In a geopolitical context marked by the rising US-China rivalry and new cold wars, it has prompted the USA and the EU to support local mining and processing of critical materials in an attempt to recover their strategic autonomy. They have also deployed raw material diplomacy to secure access to resource-rich countries by favouring allied countries whenever possible. Both decisions are difficult to implement, and progress is slow. China's dominance over the electric battery is difficult to circumscribe, especially since the USA, with the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), does not hesitate to defend its interests at the expense of the EU. The result is a politicisation of business, forcing global production networks to align themselves with the opposing blocs.

Journal of Industrial Ecology

The changing material composition of cars represents a challenge for future recycling of end-of-life vehicles (ELVs). Particularly, as current recycling targets are based solely on mass, critical metals increasingly used in cars might be lost during recycling processes, due to their small mass compared to bulk metals such as Fe and Al. We investigate a complementary indicator to material value in passenger vehicles based on exergy. The indicator is called thermodynamic rarity and represents the exergy cost (GJ) needed for producing a given material from bare rock to the market. According to our results, the thermodynamic rarity of critical metals used in cars, in most cases, supersedes that of the bulk metals that are the current focus of ELV recycling. While Fe, Al, and Cu account for more than 90% of the car's metal content, they only represent 60% of the total rarity of a car. In contrast, while Mo, Co, Nb, and Ni account for less than 1% of the car's metal content, their contribution to the car's rarity is larger than 7%. Rarity increases with the electrification level due to the greater amount of critical metals used; specifically, due to an increased use of (1) Al alloys are mainly used in the car's body-in-white of electric cars for light-weighting purposes, (2) Cu in car electronics, and (3) Co, Li, Ni, and rare earth metals (La, Nd, and Pr) in Li-ion and NiMH batteries.

The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment

Purpose The concept of criticality concerns the probability and the possible impacts of shortages in raw-material supply and is usually applied to regional economies or specific industries. With more and more products being highly dependent on potentially critical raw materials, efforts are being made to also incorporate criticality into the framework of life cycle sustainability assessment (LCSA). However, there is still some need for methodological development of indicators to measure raw-material criticality in LCSA. Methods We therefore introduce ‘economic product importance’ (EPI) as a novel parameter for the product-specific evaluation of the relevance and significance of a certain raw material for a particular product system. We thereby consider both the actual raw-material flows (life cycle inventories) and the life cycle cost. The EPI thus represents a measure for the material-specific product-system vulnerability (another component being the substitutability). Combining th...

Energy Research & Social Science, 2024

The 2023 edition of the IPCC document provides a thorough examination of the complex relationship between global energy infrastructure and essential mineral resources. It is crucial to adopt a comprehensive and proactive stance to understand and address the growing environmental challenges associated with energy production and consumption. This addresses the supply and demand scenarios of critical minerals, specifically nickel, cobalt, lithium, graphite, and copper, and examines their roles across diverse applications beyond clean energy technologies. Applying scenarios from the International Energy Agency (IEA) established in 2023, we conducted a comparative analysis to determine whether future use could impact their availability, ensuring that there is an adequate supply for all applications, not just clean technologies, in the years to come. We applied a holistic strategy that integrates technological innovation with policy ingenuity to guide society towards a sustainable reduction in its carbon footprint. Our objectives include: (1) to evaluate the potential effects of the widespread adoption of various technologies on future demand for these critical minerals, utilizing the IEA's 2023 scenarios; (2) Investigating Scarcity Risks and Demand Growth Dynamics; and (3) pinpointing specific minerals that require immediate and strategic attention to prevent potential shortages. Our findings show that demand scenarios differ by minerals and metals, identifying each of the risks and policies to address them. By contributing to the IPCC's ongoing efforts to combat climate change, this study underscores the vital importance of making informed decisions, fostering technological innovations, and implementing robust policies to successfully navigate the transition to a sustainable, low-carbon society.

Batteries

Batteries are the heart and the bottleneck of portable electronic systems. They power electronics and determine the system run time, with the size and volume determining factors in their design and implementation. Understanding the material properties of the battery components—anode, cathode, electrolyte, and separator—and their interaction is necessary to establish selection criteria based on their correlations with the battery metrics: capacity, current density, and cycle life. This review studies material used in the four battery components from the perspective and the impact of seven ions (Li+, Na+, K+, Zn2+, Ca2+, Mg2+, and Al3+), employed in commercial and research batteries. In addition, critical factors of sustainability of the supply chains—geographical raw materials origins vs. battery manufacturing companies and material properties (Young’s modulus vs. electric conductivity)—are mapped. These are key aspects toward identifying the supply chain vulnerabilities and gaps for...

Nature Communications, 2022

In recent years, increasing attention has been given to the potential supply risks of critical battery materials, such as cobalt, for electric mobility transitions. While battery technology and recycling advancement are two widely acknowledged strategies for addressing such supply risks, the extent to which they will relieve global and regional cobalt demand–supply imbalance remains poorly understood. Here, we address this gap by simulating historical (1998-2019) and future (2020-2050) global cobalt cycles covering both traditional and emerging end uses with regional resolution (China, the U.S., Japan, the EU, and the rest of the world). We show that cobalt-free batteries and recycling progress can indeed significantly alleviate long-term cobalt supply risks. However, the cobalt supply shortage appears inevitable in the short- to medium-term (during 2028-2033), even under the most technologically optimistic scenario. Our results reveal varying cobalt supply security levels by region...

2024

Structural, Technological, Trade and Behavioral Changes from the 18th century to now have accelerated the shift away of the Western’s and Asian’s productive structures from the Material-intensive and Routinized Industrial Economy to the simultaneous Material-intensive and Immaterial-intensive Routinized Industrial and Smart, Connected and Service-oriented , Knowledge-intensive and Advanced Manufacturing Economy. Since then the West and Asia became the wealthiest regions of the world. Furthermore, the contribution of the Transportation Sector to Prosperity and Global Leadership, the current race to global leadership within the U.S. and China and the rise and adoption of ' Clean-Electric and Fully Autonomous Passengers Cars, Trucks, Planes, Ships and Trains ' have increased the demand and production of EVs. Empirically, in the U.S., SAMSUNG SDI (2023) found that with the government support policies, America's electric car market, which was just the size of 17,000 cars in 2010, has been greatly increased by more than 7 times for the past 4 years (2018-2022). Last year, electric car sales reached 119,710 cars, over the 100, 000 mark for the first time. Furthermore, in 2022, thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the electric car sales in the US reached 1 million and is expected to be 1.6 million in 2023. At the global level, IEA (2023) found that IEA (2023) found that in the course of just five years, from 2017 to 2022, EV sales jumped from around 1 million to more than 10 million. It previously took five years from 2012 to 2017 for EV to grow from 100 000 to 1 million, underscoring the exponential nature of EV sales growth. However, most of the demand of EVs has targeted the Battery Electric Vehicles (BEVs). Since then, the move towards Sustainability throughout the adoption of the ' Clean-Electric and Fully Autonomous Passengers Cars, Trucks, Planes, Ships and Trains ' and by extension the Material-intensive and Immaterial-intensive Personalized, Flexible, Agile, Green, Clean, Safe, Smart and Connected Economy on the one hand and the race to EVs and global leadership within the U.S. and China on the second hand have started to increase the demand of Lithium-ion battery and make it easier for the 21st century to become a ‘ Lithium-centric Economy and Civilization ’. In fact, Airswift (2022) found that lithium is a raw material that is so vital for e-vehicles to run, that some Tesla models contain 40 kilos of it in their battery packs. It's a good measuring stick when compared to other products from different supply chains, such as laptop (30 grams) and smartphone (3 grams) batteries. As a result, data from the US Geological Survey finds that lithium-ion batteries correspond to 74% of the end-use of lithium. Furthermore, Airswift (2022) found that the demand for lithium continues to increase. It's expected that by 2025, this need will even triple. McKinsey & Company (2022) forecasts continued growth of Li-ion batteries at an annual compound rate of approximately 30% over the next decade. In fact, by 2030, Electric Vehicles, along with energy-storage systems, e-bikes, electrification of tools, and other battery-intensive applications, could account for 4,000 to 4,500 gigawatt-hours of Li-ion demand. McKinsey & Company (2022) also found that in 2015, less than 30% of lithium demand was for batteries; the bulk of demand was split between ceramics and glasses (35%) and greases, metallurgical powders, polymers, and other industrial uses (35-plus percent). By 2030, batteries are expected to account for 95% of lithium demand, and total needs will grow annually by 25 to 26 percent to reach 3.3 million to 3.8 million metric tons LCE depending on scenarios considered. However and unfortunately for the High-income and Upstream Economies of the North that are massively and dramatically relying on EVs in order to accelerate their move towards Sustainability, the growing demand of EVs and Lithium-ion batteries could increase their dependency to China. In fact, based up on the findings of Statista, 2023, in 2022, China did accountfor 50.5% of the global market of lithium-ion battery while Asia did account for 86.7%. Meaning that the production of lithium-ion battery is mainly concentrated in Asia (cf. Table 3). Since then, in the context of race to global leadership within the US and China with its associated anti-globalization resentment, protectionism, high risk of supply chain crisis and fragmentation, many countries around the world including the US have started to massively invest in the exploration and production of Lithium in order to diversify their production and increase their independency. Empirically, at the global level, IEA (2023) finds that in response to the growing demand of EV and Lithium-ion batteries, investment in critical mineral development rose 30% last year (2022), following a 20% increase in 2021.Furthermore, Airswift (2022) found that a very promising future for a segment that keeps drawing attention from venture capitalists; so far, USD$ 2.5 billion has been injected through companies worldwide with an average age of 8 years. In the U.S. emphasis has put on New Industrial Policy, Executive Orders and Massive Subsidies ( The White House Council on Environmental Quality, 2015; The White House, 2021 and The White House, 2023) in order to reduce the dependency to China. Key Words: Structural, Technological, Trade and Behavioral Changes; Western’s and Asian’s Productive Structures; Material-intensive and Immaterial-intensive Routinized Industrial and Smart, Connected and Service-oriented , Knowledge-intensive and Advanced Manufacturing Economy; Clean-Electric and Fully Autonomous Passengers Cars, Trucks, Planes, Ships and Trains; Electric Vehicles (EVs); Lithium-ion batteries ; Lithium-centric Economy and Civilization; Race To Global Leadership.

2020

Battery raw materials (cobalt, lithium, graphite, and nickel) are essential for a technologically-advanced low-carbon society. Most of these commodities are produced in just a few countries, which leads to supply risk as well as environmental and ethical issues. Finland, with its available mineral resources (deposits and mines), industry (metallurgy, refining) and technical expertise (know-how, automation), has the ideal ecosystem to tackle the challenge of improving the rechargeable battery raw materials supply chain and securing sustainable sources for Europe. The profitable extraction of these commodities in a competitive market is a complex function of key ore properties that drive extraction process performance and are directly linked to deposit geology and ore mineralogy. Hence, geometallurgy – which combines geological and metallurgical information to improve resource management, optimise extraction, and reduce technical risks – is the key multidisciplinary approach to tackli...

Environmental Science & Technology, 2014

The transition to low carbon infrastructure systems required to meet climate change mitigation targets will involve an unprecedented roll-out of technologies reliant upon materials not previously widespread in infrastructure. Many of these materials (including lithium and rare earth metals) are at risk of supply disruption. To ensure the future sustainability and resilience of infrastructure, circular economy policies must be crafted to manage these critical materials effectively. These policies can only be effective if supported by an understanding of the material demands of infrastructure transition and what reuse and recycling options are possible given the future availability of end-of-life stocks. This Article presents a novel, enhanced stocks and flows model for the dynamic assessment of material demands resulting from infrastructure transitions. By including a hierarchical, nested description of infrastructure technologies, their components, and the materials they contain, this model can be used to quantify the effectiveness of recovery at both a technology remanufacturing and reuse level and a material recycling level. The model's potential is demonstrated on a case study on the roll-out of electric vehicles in the UK forecast by UK Department of Energy and Climate Change scenarios. The results suggest policy action should be taken to ensure Li-ion battery recycling infrastructure is in place by 2025 and NdFeB motor magnets should be designed for reuse. This could result in a reduction in primary demand for lithium of 40% and neodymium of 70%.

2012

The Extractive Industries and Society, 2017

This article presents a spatial analysis of lithium availability from the mid-twentieth century to the present time in order to clarify and contribute to the growing body of scholarship on the relationship between the global lithium supply and the viability of a modern, mass-market electric vehicle industry. Drawing on archival research conducted in Bolivia in 2012, this article advances the argument that the concept of 'lithium scarcity' is much more nuanced than is often portrayed. In addition, perceptions of a worldwide lithium shortage are more entangled with business demands for certain grades of lithium at certain price points rather than actual scarcity. This analysis of lithium availability is defined in terms of the basic tension between the supply of extractable lithium deposits on the one hand and the quality and price demands of battery manufacturers on the other. This tension has played a role in determining the evolution of the electric car from a luxury to a mass-market product and involves a host of complementary and competitive business and geopolitical actors.

Sustainability, 2020

Electricity from the combination of photovoltaic panels and wind turbines exhibits potential benefits towards the sustainable cities transition. Nevertheless, the highly fluctuating and intermittent character limits an extended applicability in the energy market. Particularly, batteries represent a challenging approach to overcome the existing constraints and to achieve sustainable urban energy development. On the basis of the market roll-out and level of technological maturity, five commercially available battery technologies are assessed in this work, namely, lead–acid, lithium manganese oxide, nickel–cadmium, nickel–metal hydride, and vanadium redox flow. When considering sustainable development, environmental assessments provide valuable information. In this vein, an environmental analysis of the technologies is conducted using a life cycle assessment methodology from a cradle-to-gate perspective. A comparison of the environmental burden of battery components identified vanadium...

Energies

Lithium, a silver-white alkali metal, with significantly high energy density, has been exploited for making rechargeable lithium-ion batteries (LiBs). They have become one of the main energy storage solutions in modern electric cars (EVs). Cobalt, nickel, and manganese are three other key components of LiBs that power electric vehicles (EVs). Neodymium and dysprosium, two rare earth metals, are used in the permanent magnet-based motors of EVs. The operation of EVs also requires a high amount of electricity for recharging their LiBs. Thus, the CO2 emission is reduced during the operation of an EV if the recharged electricity is generated from non-carbon sources such as hydroelectricity, solar energy, and nuclear energy. LiBs in EVs have been pushed to the limit because of their limited storage capacity and charge/discharge cycles. Batteries account for a substantial portion of the size and weight of an EV and occupy the entire chassis. Thus, future LiBs must be smaller and more power...