April | 2023 | Lithium-ion battery a clean future?

Having discussed so much about the negative impacts and pollution lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) cause, can we really just do away with LIBs altogether? And what do we replace it if we were ever to get rid of LIBs altogether? To what extent can we blame the increasing pollution by LIBs on the decreasing cost of LIBs? These are all unanswered questions that remain difficult to answer.

While LIB and the process of manufacturing and disposing of them can be very polluting, we continue relying heavily on them. Their close relationship with renewable energy makes them even more sticky issue. The decreasing cost of LIBs has also undeniably played an important role in allowing the implementation of renewable green energy to become more economically feasible than ever by reducing their margins between fossil fuel-produced energy (Gielen et al., 2019). Global greenhouse gas emissions can potentially decrease significantly once renewables reach grid parity.

Do we attempt to reduce global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by moving towards renewables instead while knowingly producing more LIBs or reduce LIB-related pollution by continue sticking with fossil fuels? For now, as global warming and climate change is the most pressing environmental issue globally discussed, reducing GHGs will take priority (United Nations, n.d.). However, what will happen when LIB-related pollution starts impacting the global environment negatively we will never know. Will it become the next plastic? It has brought us so much convenience by allowing us to store energy efficiently. Yet we still do not have a perfect way of discarding them when they are no longer deemed useful to us.

Moreover, will there be a new energy storage technology that will emerge as economically competitive and greener than LIBs? Even if there is, constructing such an energy storage system will require minerals and resources which are polluting in their own ways.

Nevertheless, these blogs are not here to reject LIBs altogether. I still do believe that they are important for the future of clean energy. The main message I hope to get across is that as long as our demand for energy continues to rise, no matter how ‘clean’ our energy becomes, it will never become completely ‘green’. While we cannot stop using energy and electricity altogether, we should be aware of the impacts these ‘clean’ energy has and never stop looking for ways to reduce their impacts (United Nations, n.d.).

What will happen to the future of LIBs, only time will tell. For now, reducing our energy use is a simple way to start protecting our environment.

Reference List

Gielen, D., Boshell, F., Saygin, D., Bazilian, M., Wagner, N. L., & Gorini, R. (2019). The role of renewable energy in the global energy transformation. Energy Strategy Reviews, 24, 38–50. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esr.2019.01.006

United Nations. (n.d.). Li-ion batteries – powering the fossil-fuel-free economy | United Nations. https://www.un.org/en/Frontier-Technologies-Issues

Despite having discussed all the environmental and social impacts of lithium-ion batteries (LIBs), we cannot ignore the fact that the demand for LIBs will continue to rise due to their importance in the clean energy sector. To reduce pollution in a trend that cannot be reversed, many would think of the 3Rs, reduce, reuse and recycle. However, as briefly mentioned in the first few blogs, implementing the 3Rs have its own set of problems. As the demand for LIBs is expected to grow exponentially, reducing the use of LIBs is not very feasible now. Hence, this blog will mainly explore the challenges related to reusing and recycling LIBs.

Reusing LIBs:

Reusing refurbished or repurposed LIBs is not a new practice. LIBs have long been reused for less demanding purposes at the end of their first end-of-life (Beaudet et al., 2020). This is because most batteries will still have a charge capacity of up to 80% at their first end of life (Beaudet et al., 2020).Through reusing these LIBs, demand for new LIBs which are much more polluting due to pollution related to production decreases.

However, the decreasing production cost of LIBs especially in recent years has made reusing LIBs increasingly less economically viable (Beaudet et al., 2020; Ziegler et al., 2021; Mauler et al., 2021). According to Ziegler et al. (2021), LIB technology has decreased by up to 97% since they were first commercially used 30 years ago. This exponential decrease in the cost of LIBs is closely tied to the emergence of Chinese LIB producers (Figure 1) (Wakabayashi & Fu, 2022). Along with the stagnation of the high restoration cost of LIBs, it is becoming increasingly attractive for manufacturers to choose new LIBs rather than refurbish old ones.

Figure 1: Decrease in LIB technology over the years (Mauler et al., 2021)

Recycling LIBs:

The recycling process of LIBs remains tedious due to the cumbersome collection and recycling process (Spector, 2022; Beaudet et al., 2020). Although governments such as the Chinese government have encouraged manufacturers to choose recycled materials for manufacturing (Wei et al., 2022), the success of these efforts is put into question. It is costly, time-consuming and troublesome for manufacturers to collect the LIBs back for disassembling and recycling (Spector, 2022; Beaudet et al., 2020). LIBs that are exported overseas will need to be shipped back to manufacturers if manufacturers do not have factories overseas which are more often than not the case.

What about engaging a recycling firm?

While engaging a third part recycling firm may sound feasible, it is often difficult for manufacturers and recycling firms to reach an agreement due to a variety of reasons. Due to intellectual property rights and industrial secrets, manufacturers are often unwilling to share the chemical formulas of batteries with third-party recycling firms making the safe discharging of batteries an extremely difficult one (Sachan et al., 2020). Disassembling a battery without discharging often leads to explosions and fires making LIB recycling facilities particularly expensive to protect the safety of workers and ensure a safe disassembling process.

Reference List

Beaudet, A., Larouche, F., Amouzegar, K., Bouchard, P., & Zaghib, K. (2020). Key Challenges and Opportunities for Recycling Electric Vehicle Battery Materials. Sustainability, 12(14), 5837. https://doi.org/10.3390/su12145837

Mauler, L., Duffner, F., Zeier, W. G., & Leker, J. (2021). Battery cost forecasting: a review of methods and results with an outlook to 2050. Energy and Environmental Science, 14(9), 4712–4739. https://doi.org/10.1039/d1ee01530c

Sachan, S., Deb, S., & Singh, S. N. (2020). Different charging infrastructures along with smart charging strategies for electric vehicles. Sustainable Cities and Society, 60, 102238. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scs.2020.102238

Spector, J. (2022, June 13). EV battery recycling is costly. These 5 startups could change that. Canary Media. https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/electric-vehicles/ev-battery-recycling-is-costly-these-five-startups-could-change-that

Wakabayashi, D., & Fu, C. (2022, September 27). For China’s Auto Market, Electric Isn’t the Future. It’s the Present. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/26/business/china-electric-vehicles.html

Wei, L., Wang, C., & Li, Y. (2022). Governance strategies for end-of-life electric vehicle battery recycling in China: A tripartite evolutionary game analysis. Frontiers in Environmental Science, 10. https://doi.org/10.3389/fenvs.2022.1071688

Ziegler, M. S., Song, J., & Trancik, J. E. (2021). Determinants of lithium-ion battery technology cost decline. Energy and Environmental Science, 14(12), 6074–6098. https://doi.org/10.1039/d1ee01313k

Lithium-ion battery a clean future?

Monthly Archives: April 2023

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