Clearing the air: There are plenty of minerals for EVs, and they have far less environmental impact than fossil fuels

There are more than enough mineral raw materials to support a full, global transition to electric vehicles (EVs). Worries about mineral shortages are overblown. The ICCT estimates that the battery material needs for global passenger EVs reach 8% to 14% of proven global reserves for lithium, nickel, and cobalt by 2035. Additionally, new research by BNEF found that global battery manufacturing capacity was more than double demand in 2023.

The ICCT also found that lithium supply from new and planned mining and refining projects in the United States and its trade partners vastly exceeds the lithium demand from U.S. vehicle electrification. We identified more than 100 lithium mining and refining projects underway across the United States and its existing and potential trade partners including Australia, Canada, Chile, Peru, and Argentina.

One of the many benefits of an EV future is much less need for dirty drilling, mining, and extraction. “When it comes to raw materials there is simply no comparison. Over its lifetime, an average fossil-fuel car burns the equivalent of a stack of oil barrels, 25 stories high. If you take into account the recycling of battery materials, only around 30 kg of metals would be lost—roughly the size of a football,” wrote Lucien Mathieu from Transport & Environment.

Indeed, there’s a huge opportunity to reduce virgin raw material demand through increased battery recycling. Although the volume of end-of-life EV batteries available for recycling is low today, the supply will grow significantly by 2050. And the recycling industry is already underway. We estimated that as of September 2023, installed battery recycling capacity in the United States far exceeds the volume of end-of-life batteries, and installed and announced recycling capacity is already enough to recycle the volume end-of-life batteries expected 20 years from now.

Governments also taking action on recycling

Several of the actions already underway to support recycling include government incentives for domestic recycling facilities, regulating transport and handling of end-of-life EV batteries, and setting standards for recovery rates and recycled content. In January 2024, New Jersey became the first U.S. state to pass an extended producer responsibility law for EV batteries, and it requires battery producers to create management plans and submit them to the Department of Environmental Protection for approval. Note, too, that Europe’s new landmark battery regulation will help enhance battery sustainability by increasing battery and battery material collection, recovery, and recycling rates and also the responsible sourcing of raw materials. Creating robust battery material supply chains will enable automakers and suppliers to continue to build new battery manufacturing capacity in the United States and Europe, and to design batteries with long-term recycling and material recovery in mind. These efforts would support and expand on the billions of dollars of existing EV investments already underway in the United States and Europe.

In the United States, the Inflation Reduction Act incentivizes raw material mining, refining, recycling, and battery production in the United States and by its trade partners by investing in domestic facilities and providing consumer tax credits based on where battery components and critical minerals are sourced. This directly incentivizes raw material mining, refining, recycling, and battery production in markets that tend to have the highest environmental, social, labor, and governance standards in place.

Substantially less pollution

Each EV only needs a small amount of critical minerals for its full life; this is in stark contrast to combustion engine vehicles, which require the extraction and refining of fossil fuels throughout their lives. EV recycling can further reduce the emission and effluence of harmful pollutants associated with vehicle operation and manufacture. For example, an environmental impact analysis of the battery recycling process used by Redwood Materials showed that the water use, energy consumption, and greenhouse gas emissions of processing spent batteries is more than 60% lower than refining newly mined battery materials. Additionally, according to Redwood Materials, its process produces no liquid waste or harmful combustion byproducts and is monitored by the Nevada Department of Environmental Protection.

Extracting and combusting fossil fuels is far more environmentally harmful than battery material mining, battery production, and driving electric. And battery recycling helps to avoid the need for new material extraction and further reduce the associated energy consumption and emissions. Beyond that, technological advancements in battery specific energy that are expected in the future would help to reduce the amount of raw materials in each EV. Increased use of renewable energy will also help to minimize emissions from battery production. The same cannot be said for burning fossil fuels in combustion vehicles.