New Energy World™
New Energy World™ embraces the whole energy industry as it connects and converges to address the decarbonisation challenge. It covers progress being made across the industry, from the dynamics under way to reduce emissions in oil and gas, through improvements to the efficiency of energy conversion and use, to cutting-edge initiatives in renewable and low-carbon technologies.
How battery recycling is charging up the energy transition
11/2/2026
10 min read
Feature
Driven by the surge in electric vehicles (EVs), a mountain of second-life and end-of-life (EoL) batteries are building up. Effective and efficient recycling demands process innovation to boost recovery of valuable metals, improve energy consumption and the environmental footprint; along with new regulatory demands like the ‘battery passport’ to guarantee traceability and sustainability over coming years. New Energy World Features Editor Brian Davis reports.
How big is the challenge? Passenger EV sales are climbing globally from 17.2 million in 2024 to 42 million in 2030, and potentially 80 million by 2050, according to the latest Bloomberg NEF forecast. This rapid expansion will drive a corresponding surge in EoL lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) in coming decades. The analyst estimates that over 1.2 million EV batteries will be retired annually, given that the average lifespan of an EV battery is 8–10 years.
Although relatively few EV batteries have reached EoL to date, most recycling activity today is focused on production scrap, or second-life utilisation as fixed battery energy storage systems (BESS). While LIBs are not toxic like lead-acid or nickel-cadmium batteries, they do contain elements that could contaminate the environment. What’s more, they contain materials like nickel, cobalt, lithium, manganese and copper which can be recovered and re-used in new batteries.
Depending on their size, configuration and chemistry, an LIB can perform 500–10,000 cycles of charging and discharging, till it reaches about 70–80% capacity – from eight years under warranty to 15–20 years at EoL.