Recycling, recycled content and environmental impacts of electric vehicle batteries – The material circularity and carbon footprint nexus under the EU Batteries Regulation

This paper explores how recycling and the integration of secondary materials contribute to the reduction of the carbon footprint (CF) of different lithium-ion batteries under the current EU regulatory framework. It quantifies the net benefit of the default recycling process, and the possible benefit of (i) alternative, more advanced recycling processes and of (ii) increasing the use of secondary (recycled) materials for manufacturing. Under the current CF calculation method, we find the use of secondary material for battery cell production to have a very limited impact on the CF (decrease by only 0.4% with 30% secondary material), while the use of advanced recycling processes can reduce the CF by up to 16% compared to the default. As such, the findings highlight the need for a combined approach to advance the circularity of batteries via the CF, mandatory recycled content and recycling targets.