The European Commission is set to adopt a new legislative proposal today to boost the market for sustainable batteries, including those used for EVs, trains, energy storage, and non-transport related applications. An official announcement is expected by Thursday.
The news comes as the European Union prepares to publish its Sustainable and Smart Mobility strategy – a plan to reduce transport emissions across the EU by 90% by 2050 – and following the announcement by the European Investment Bank to allocate more than €1bn to battery-related projects.
According to a leak circulated this week, the new legally-binding framework – an update of the existing EU batteries directive published in 2006 – will focus on ensuring sustainable sourcing and mandatory due diligence across the supply-chain; boosting the production of longer-lasting and reusable batteries; and improving recyclability of batteries by upgrading targets and incentivising recycled content to reduce the extraction of primary raw materials.
It will also aim to phase out non-rechargeable batteries from the market; improving the separate collection of batteries for recycling and reuse; and replacing some of the most toxic technologies with clean alternatives
The proposed measures will be discussed by the European Parliament and national governments before becoming part of an EU-wide, legally-binding regulation in 2021.
According to the European Environmental Bureau (EEB), while batteries are necessary to phase out diesel and petrol cars and replace fossil fuels with clean energy in other sectors of the European economy, the extraction of raw materials used to produce them has led to the depletion and pollution of waterways, soil and other natural resources in many areas of the world.
In the Chilean region of Salar de Atacama, lithium mining activities have reportedly consumed 65% of the region’s water supplies, forcing local farmers to buy water from other areas. Furthermore, if recycling rates do not grow sufficiently by 2050, the reserves of copper, lithium, nickel and manganese in existing mines will be exhausted and much of the depletion will be due to the batteries required by EVs, said the EEB.
It added that the carbon footprint of the battery production chain is “huge”, with the production of a long capacity battery for a typical EV resulting in almost nine tonnes of CO2 emissions.
Piotr Barczak, policy officer for the circular economy with the European Environmental Bureau, said: “The proposal is the way forward to reduce the environmental impact and downside risks of our increasingly electrified economy.
“If produced from responsibly sourced materials, more efficient and durable batteries can help mitigate the environmental impact of mining. At the same time, they can also make Europe less dependent on imports from third countries by boosting the internal market for secondary raw materials.”
