Abstract:

"Energy & The Circular Economy: Recycling Waste, Batteries"

As the 2021 World's Most Sustainable company and one of the world's largest non-automotive Lithium-Ion battery providers, there are high expectations for Schneider Electric to promote circularity. This presentation is a summary of experience from an OEM's perspective:

Like a wave, our end-users drive expectations through the OEM and back to the mineral processor partners who recycle batteries. End-users expect adequate recovery, reuse and recycling when their use of the battery ends. For Lithium-Ion batteries, this can be a decade or more from when they enter the market from any place on the globe.
While the availability of recycling options in today's market is limited, it is expanding as technology and capacity advance.
An early focus was placed on developing a robust and safe Takeback Process and Qualified Secondary Uses that delay end-of-life while waiting for the recycling ecosystem to develop.
Today, large-scale, Technically Feasible and global Recycling processes are coming into existence.
And OEMs are advancing second-life applications in many ways
- In the development of Standards (e.g. UL 1974: Evaluation of Repurposing Batteries)
- Qualifying emerging second-use applications. This involves identifying suitable applications into which battery products are safely and effectively repurposed.
- The development infrastructure to support the logistics, evaluation, and repurposing of lithium-ion battery products.
However, circularity still faces obstacles. Lithium-ion batteries generated as wastes are typically subject to stringent Dangerous Goods/HAZMAT requirements that make transporting them difficult.

Neither the end user, the OEM, Battery Manufacturer, nor the Mineral Recycler can undertake this alone. A circular battery platform requires all stakeholders to align.

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Jeevan Jayenthiran