Battery Raw Materials and Recycling

Governments and manufacturers are seeking to diversify battery raw material supply while imposing increasingly complex requirements around origin, ownership, processing location and supply-chain security. But identifying alternative supply is not the same as building an executable supply chain. This presentation examines how offtake, financing, local processing requirements, competing buyers and mineral-market structures determine which diversification strategies can actually work, and where policy ambition collides with project economics.

As geopolitics and new investments shift the buildout of battery metals and critical minerals supply chains from Asia to the West, market participants increasingly are looking for independent price references to differentiate material costs between regions. S&P Global Energy Platts discusses price assessments, emerging trends, and what’s next for these global markets.

Twenty years after An Inconvenient Truth, the energy transition has its own: the minerals it needs are already above ground, and we're throwing them away. In 2022, e-waste held $91 billion in recoverable metals; we captured $28 billion. The barrier isn't recycling technology, it's price. Assets valued at zero don't form markets. This talk shows how measurable, defensible valuation turns end-of-life batteries and energy assets into mineral supply.

As lithium recycling accelerates, so too does the need to understand and credibly communicate its carbon footprint. This presentation explores the development of the International Lithium Association’s Product Carbon Footprint (PCF) Guidance for recycled lithium, building on the association’s established guidance for primary lithium. It will highlight the methodological challenges of accounting for recycling processes, allocation and avoided impacts, and how the guidance can enable more consistent, transparent and meaningful carbon footprint comparisons across the lithium value chain. 

Policy and corporate strategies aim to localize battery supply chains in North America to reduce bottlenecks and bring economic benefits. However, investment into the supply chain has struggled to keep pace with gigafactory scale-up, resulting in a high reliance on imports of components and materials. This presentation will explore the challenges to localized battery supply chains in North America, and how innovation and policy can support greater levels of self-sufficiency.

Direct cathode recycling enables recovery of end-of-life lithium-ion batteries while preserving the structural integrity of cathode materials. Demonstrated here is a novel, scalable separation technique that has the potential to produce high-purity cathodes with performance metrics comparable to commercial materials. It is crucial that these recovered cathodes meet next-gen EV targets. Cathode upcycling improves energy density, reduces reliance on raw material mining, and supports a circular supply chain.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Critical Minerals and Energy Innovation (CMEI) is advancing America’s critical minerals supply chains and accelerating next-generation energy technologies to strengthen our nation’s energy security and power our future. Li-ion battery recycling can provide a key source of domestically produced critical materials but faces challenges in costs, performance, and implementation. This presentation will provide an overview of the battery recycling activities across CMEI offices.