Recycling startups like Ascend Elements and Redwood Materials still notched some wins in the mission to turn old electric vehicle batteries into new ones.
By Julian Spector, Canary Media, 10 December 2024
One of the major knocks on the electric vehicle revolution is that batteries pose a massive environmental problem, because of how their ingredients are sourced and how they are disposed of at the end of their life. To counter this, the cleantech sector is vying to spin up modern, efficient battery recycling to break down old batteries and pull out the materials to build new ones.
Over the past few years, the outlines of a domestic battery recycling industry have started to take shape. A cadre of new startups raised a few billion dollars based on promises of recycling breakthroughs that improve on legacy techniques, like pyrometallurgy and hydrometallurgy. The country’s first new-wave battery recycling facilities have opened up and begun operating, and more are under construction.
But 2024 has brought a series of disappointments for the emerging industry, including stalled construction projects, reduced expectations for what new recycling technologies can actually deliver, canceled projects, layoffs, and a catastrophic fire.
Beyond company-specific setbacks, the sector as a whole has struggled with a collapse in the price of several key battery commodities, namely lithium, nickel, and cobalt. Recyclers want to sell their metal outputs for more than it cost them to recycle; they succeed if they become a cheaper source of metals than mining. That’s easier to pull off when prices soar like they did in 2022, but the drop in prices, while delightful for battery manufacturers and customers, scrambled the economics for recyclers.
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