We Can End Our Dependence on the Newly Mined Minerals That Go into EV Batteries. Here’s How.

Conversations around the EV battery supply chain tend to center on the perceived dearth of available minerals, the vulnerability to disruption, and the lack of transparency. While it’s important to highlight the challenges facing the supply chain, it’s equally — if not more — important to focus on what’s going right. We need to concentrate on solutions and adopt an attitude of informed optimism.

RMI’s latest report, The Battery Mineral Loop: The Path from Extraction to Circularity , does just that. It shows that by strengthening EV battery recycling, improving car and system efficiency, and accelerating battery innovation, we can eliminate the need for newly mined battery minerals by 2050, prevent the emissions associated with their extraction, avoid the social and environmental harms that come from mining, create local jobs, and improve energy security.

Below, we outline some of the report’s key insights, including encouraging trends that will help us meet peak mineral demand; what stakeholders can do to create a net-zero, resilient, responsible, and circular EV battery supply chain capable of meeting this demand; and the many benefits of doing so.

1. We are already on our way to meeting demand for new minerals, which is expected to peak in the next decade

Given the tone that permeates discussions related to batteries, it’s easy to see why even battery experts tend to underestimate how quickly the sector has improved. Because we don’t recognize the progress we’ve made in just a few years, many don’t realize that the sector has already significantly curbed demand for new minerals. This lack of awareness has led to the widespread misconception that the challenges we face are insurmountable.

Our research shows that they are not: advancements in battery chemistry, density, and recycling have already reduced demand considerably. Without those improvements in just the past decade, current nickel and cobalt demand would be twice as high. As we note in the report, the growth of lithium iron phosphate batteries, which don’t need nickel or cobalt, has helped decrease mineral demand. And average battery density — the amount of energy a battery can store per unit of weight or volume — has improved by about 25 percent since 2015.

Recycling has also played a large role in curtailing demand: in 2019, 59 percent of all lithium-ion batteries were recycled globally. Recent assessments suggest that today’s rate may be as high as 90 percent; and once the batteries are collected and recycled, 80–95 percent of their minerals can be recovered with current recycling processes.

Many are worried that recycling capacity will not be robust enough to leverage the full potential of end-of-life (EOL) batteries. But we found that the total announced recycling capacity is already enough to recycle all EOL batteries through 2030, with room to spare. And given that we can predict how many EOL batteries will become available in the coming years, we can expand recycling capacity with less financial risk.

If these trends continue, we will see peak demand for mined cobalt, nickel, and lithium in about a decade.

2. Six solutions can keep the momentum going

Stakeholders should adopt the six solutions outlined in our report, namely:

• Invest in new and improved battery chemistries that require fewer critical minerals.
• Increase battery density.
• Strengthen battery recycling so that we can use as many recovered minerals from EOL batteries as possible.
• Extend the life of batteries so that fewer new ones are needed.
• Make cars more efficient. Lighter, sleeker, and right-sized cars will require smaller batteries.
• Make the transportation system more efficient. Encourage the use of public transit, e-scooters, e-bikes, car shares, and walking through better urban planning, smarter transportation investments, and efficient logistics.

If stakeholders take these steps, our research shows that we will only need 125 million tons of new battery minerals before we reach full circularity. That’s 17 times smaller than the amount of oil we extract and process for road transport every year, forever.

3. There are numerous benefits to creating a net-zero, resilient, responsible, and circular EV battery supply chain

If we get this right, the benefits to electrification, communities, and the environment are enormous. We will:

• Hasten transportation electrification, thereby significantly reducing emissions, avoiding the social and environmental harms of mineral extraction, lowering countries’ dependency on oil and gas imports, and saving millions of lives.
• Kickstart a “perpetual motion machine,” by which we mean a closed-loop supply chain that will continue to fully leverage battery minerals’ value for Over the next 20 years, we will gather enough minerals to not only power the energy system of 2050 but also through 2100 and beyond.
• Move from oil dependence to circular independence. Most economies would grind to a halt if oil imports were to stop. EVs powered by renewables face no such short-term risk, especially when paired with battery recycling and (re)manufacturing.
• Create countless opportunities for the Global South, which imports millions of second-hand cars from the Global North. Once car fleets shift to EVs, used cars’ EOL batteries can help set up a robust recycling industry, creating jobs, spurring economic growth, and increasing countries’ geopolitical leverage over the battery supply chain.
• Improve energy security. Today, China leads the battery circularity race to the top: its largest battery manufacturer, CATL, expects battery recycling to lead to mineral independence in the country by 2042. Through efficiency and recycling, the West can catch up and become mineral independent by the 2040s as well.

We have much to celebrate

Our research clearly shows that there’s more to celebrate than to lament. We will get closer to a robust, resilient, responsible, and circular EV battery supply chain if we look to the future, identify solutions that are currently working, and focus on what we can accomplish, unfettered by doubts, skepticism, and pessimism. If we do, billions will benefit around the world.