Powering the Future 2025

Executive summary This report identifies concerns about today’s EV battery (EVB) value chain that contribute to negative environmental and social impacts and hinder the development of equitable socio-economic value. Using insights gleaned from an expert advisory panel, the Global Future Council on the Future of Responsible Resource Use, and secondary research, it identifies five changes needed to drive towards a circular battery economy and address these concerns. Priorities include: 1. Developing standardized, interoperable track-and-trace platforms. You can’t manage what you can’t see and measure. Following a battery and its materials from extraction to production to end of life (EOL) can help battery manufacturers and automakers make responsible purchasing decisions; ensure adherence to environmental and human rights principles and regulations; and provide critical information about repair, reuse, repurposing and recycling that stakeholders need to plan and invest effectively. 2. Setting performance and data standards and financing R&D for design innovation that prioritizes disassembly and recyclability alongside safety, cost and range. Battery design today prioritizes first-life performance – but choices made in battery design influence, if not determine, whether a battery can and will be repaired, reused, repurposed and recycled. Additionally, access to data about the battery’s design, health and remaining useful life is crucial for enabling safe, efficient and economical second life and EOL management. Developing performance and data standards, implementing supportive policy, and finding innovative ways to finance R&D for battery design can help prioritize second life and EOL management in battery design and data-sharing.3. Using targeted policy interventions to help overcome economic and technical barriers faced in recycling and second life. High capex requirements, insufficient feedstock volumes and volatile mineral markets subject EVB recycling to financial uncertainty and put the industry at risk. Similarly, declining new battery prices, uncertainty around the value of used batteries, and high costs and technical challenges of reuse and repurposing may prevent the second-life industry from scaling up. Policy intervention is needed to support these emerging industries at this critical moment as a wave of EVBs reaching end of first life approaches, creating the opportunity to increase resource efficiency, reduce the embedded environmental and social impacts of EVBs, and capitalize on the substantial socio-economic opportunities associated with second-life batteries. 4. Developing regional, circular value chains within a global circular economy, and facilitating responsible cross-border movement of batteries and battery materials. Today’s EVB supply chain is both geographically concentrated and dispersed: concentrated because mining, refining, processing and assembly take place in just a few countries, and dispersed because battery materials travel tens of thousands of miles as they move through the value chain. These factors weaken the resilience of the value chain while driving up emissions. At the same time, today’s movement patterns and international regulations related to EV batteries may cause inadvertent harm to the developing economies that import used vehicles and batteries. Enabling more countries to participate in the value chain, and facilitating responsible movement of batteries and battery materials can increase resilience, reduce emissions and prevent inadvertent harm to developing markets while building a circular battery economy.Powering the Future: Overcoming Battery Supply Chain Challenges with CircularityJanuary 2025 Powering the Future: Overcoming Battery Supply Chain Challenges with Circularity 4