> EU regulations requiring lithium-ion batteries to contain at least 6% recycled lithium by 2031, rising to 12% by 2036.
Seriously?
The EU should aim for massive growth in battery deployment in transportation and grid storage. If they hope for, say, 10x growth in deployed battery capacity within a time frame comparable to the lifespan of a battery, then even a 100% recycling rate would not produce enough lithium.
I suppose people could recycle batteries just to produce new batteries and acquire recycling credits, but this is absurd.
> recycled lithium
this would be a tragedy if it leads to recycling batteries that could be repurposed, say 100kwh car batteries with decreased range that could have become 60kwh residential batteries.
It will probably amount to recycling credit schemes I am sure. But that would definitely boost lithium recycling efforts.
From memory over 1million disposable vapes are thrown away each day, from 500 of the bigger cell vapes a Youtuber was able build a home battery to power his house. I don't think 100% recycled makes sense but there sure is a lot of lithium getting thrown into the bin. Incentives to recapture that are good.