Can India turn its problem of EV battery waste into a clean-energy opportunity?

While the country’s booming EV market cannot thrive without a robust battery-recycling apparatus,  a strong legislative framework along with recycling plants point towards a sustainable future

By the year 2030, the demand for battery usage in India’s booming Electric Vehicle (EV) market is expected to go as high as 158 gWh (gigawatt hours), according to the Indian Institute of Sustainable Development. EVs in India and across the world, use lithium-ion batteries, given their capacity to store and deliver the maximum amount of electric output. India, however, isn’t a resource-rich country when it comes to reserves of the founding elements of a lithium-ion battery, which include lithium, cobalt, and nickel. While a variety of battery chemistries are being experimented with in order to reduce the dependence on said minerals, there’s no getting around the fact that a booming EV market cannot exist with a thriving battery recycling market running parallelly.

Last year, the Central Pollution Control Board’s (CPCB) updated Battery Waste Management Rules mandated that every EV maker in the country must tie up with a registered EV recycler, who will, in turn, issue a certificate for the management of battery waste. Even the United States, in a bid to counter China’s increasing dominance in the EV battery recycling market, has introduced the Inflation Reduction Act which certifies every recycled battery as American-made, regardless of its origin, thereby qualifying it for government subsidies. 

Why recycle what is sustainable?

The fact that lithium, cobalt, and nickel are limited resources is not the only concern. An equally crucial matter is the environmental cost of mining the minerals that go into the making of EV batteries. According to Nitin Gupta, CEO and co-founder of Attero Recycling Pvt Ltd, recycling is a far less carbon- and water-intensive process than mining lithium. “To mine one tonne of lithium carbonate, you need half a million gallons of water.”. Gupta adds that it’s no coincidence that countries like Chile, Bolivia, and Argentina—often referred to as the “Lithium Triangle” due to their vast lithium reserves—are now some of the driest regions in the world because of excessive mining. The global race towards clean mobility is leaving in its wake fragile ecosystems and indigenous communities without access to fresh water. According to Vilkrant Singh, co-founder of BatX Energies, “The process of recycling a battery emits 54 per cent less carbon than extracting the same amount through mining.”

Moreover, there are geopolitical factors at play too. At present, China has a stranglehold on the global supply chain for most battery-grade materials. So even if the materials are mined elsewhere, the bulk of refining required to make them ready for battery usage is carried out by China. According to Gupta, “Ninety per cent of battery-grade graphite comes from China, and so does more than 80 per cent of battery-grade lithium carbonate hydroxide. Globally, the regulators are creating a policy to incentivise the circular economy or creating these critical mineral supply chains in a domestic market.” For a country that’s not as resource-rich as China, Australia, or the US, recycling EV battery content is essential for having greater control over precious resource material. Even the Inflation Reduction Act in the US has been introduced in a bid to undercut China’s supply chain supremacy. 

How does it work?

According to Gupta, 70 per cent of the world’s recyclable battery material comes from manufacturing waste, with the remaining 30 per cent being accounted for by end-of-life battery recycling. India, however, imports 100 per cent of its lithium-ion battery cells—the essential building blocks of a battery pack—and so does not have any manufacturing waste at present. This means that recyclers in India have to either import the waste created while manufacturing a lithium-ion battery cell or rely primarily upon batteries at the end of their first ownership cycle. For a thriving recycling ecosystem, India needs to manufacture its lithium-ion cells locally, and at a much larger scale.

Both Attero and BatX have sizeable commercial recycling plants tending to all manner of lithium-ion batteries, right from small 30-gram cell phone batteries to those used for energy storage solutions and large batteries meant for buses, each weighing up to nearly a ton. According to Gupta, the more versatile a battery plant—that is, the greater the variety of battery chemistries that it can recycle—the more profitable the recycler is likely to be. The recycling business works on a highest-yield-for-lowest-cost model. “Most battery recycling firms the world over are able to extract 70 per cent of battery material. Fledgeling recycling startups are more likely to recover capital expenditure when India starts to manufacture lithium-ion cells at a large scale.” he explains. 

A legislative push 

According to the Battery Waste Management Rules, all Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) or EV makers are obligated to not only recycle end-of-life batteries but use an increasingly large portion of recycled battery material with each passing year. Brands like Tata Motors, MG Motors, and Ather Energy among others have received five-year certificates under the Extended Producers Responsibility guidelines, compelling them to be responsible for their own battery waste.

According to a statement from the Ministry of Environment, Forest & Climate Change, “Mandating the minimum percentage of recovery of materials from waste batteries under the rules will bring new technologies and investment in the recycling and refurbishment industry and create new business opportunities”. In a country where the battery recycling industry has been largely unregulated so far, the rules finally give the battery recycling movement some teeth, preventing the re-selling and re-packaging of used batteries, since all recyclers will now be registered under a government portal.

However, according to Suhas Rajkumar, co-founder of homegrown e-scooter startup Simple Energy, legacy manufacturers have a leg-up in this space, with capital ready to be invested. “Tata Chemicals will be one of the first players in this space and Tata Motors will be their first client,” he says. Singh concurs, adding, “What is presently lacking is a policy framework that will offer Production-Linked Incentives (PLIs) that reward recyclers according to  their production capacity. Gupta says that such a PLI is in the works, and will be introduced shortly. 

The road ahead 

Battery cell chemistry, mining processes, and recycling output are all being worked on simultaneously to make the EV industry as sustainable as possible. Rajkumar shares that certain endeavours are being made to extend battery longevity beyond the current eight-year period. This might put OEMs at odds with recyclers since longer life spans for batteries would mean that recyclers have to wait longer to profit from it. “Earlier, the average battery used to last two years. Now it’s somewhere between six to eight years,” says Rajkumar. At the same time, less water-intensive methods of extracting lithium, cobalt, and graphite are also being worked upon. “LG and Cummins—two of the biggest battery producers—are working on techniques that will make mining sustainable by 95 per cent," says Singh.

But while batteries are being designed to be less reliant on cobalt and graphite, the demand for EV batteries is skyrocketing worldwide. By 2030, the global demand for battery-grade lithium will reach one to two million tonnes. The only way forward to successfully grapple with such demand, while having greater control over local battery-cell pricing and meet net-zero carbon emission targets, is via the recycling route. According to Gupta “Globally, the EV recycling market will be worth US$5 billion by 2030, and India will comprise 10 per cent of that market.”

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