Making EV Batteries Truly Sustainable: Where to Focus and What Industry Can Do

June 1, 2026

As the global electric vehicle fleet approaches 40 million vehicles, a critical question emerges: are we truly on the path to building a sustainable transportation future, and where should we focus our efforts to improve? The answer lies in how quickly we can move from today’s linear EV battery value chain into a truly circular system.

The EU-funded RECIRCULATE project is taking a life-cycle view of EV batteries to answer exactly that question. The study examined a baseline plug-in hybrid (PHEV) NMC622 battery pack with a nominal capacity of 13.6 kWh across its entire life cycle, from raw material extraction to End-of-Life (EoL) management, highlighting where the biggest environmental impacts occur and how circular strategies can change the picture.

What the Life Cycle Perspective Tells Us

When the battery’s journey is examined from beginning to end (cradle-to-grave), one conclusion stands out: the main environmental burden is generated before the battery reaches the vehicle. Material extraction and processing, mainly for cathode and anode production, as well as assembling the battery cells into modules and packs, are all energy-intensive steps that dominate the overall footprint. Key findings show that battery manufacturing consistently drives the largest share of environmental impacts, representing 62 percent of the total International Organization for Standardization (ISO)-based Global Warming Potential (GWP).

Overall, GWP of the baseline battery is 0.016 kg CO₂ eq per kWh delivered during its lifetime, or 175 kg CO₂ per kWh capacity.

The battery’s use stage also plays an important role, accounting for 34 percent of the total GWP. Strongly influenced by the electricity mix used to charge the vehicle.

**Figure 1** Global Warming Potential (GWP) Distribution of the Baseline PHEV Battery (Image: Eurecat)

The EoL stage includes transportation, dismantling, and recycling, yet contributes only marginally, typically below 1-5 percent of total impact. This data confirms that the manufacturing and use phases dominate the life cycle profile. Yet EoL activities are crucial for enabling circularity. Without robust logistics, safe handling, and efficient recycling technologies, it is impossible to keep valuable materials in the loop or extend the useful life of batteries beyond their first automotive application.

The fact that battery materials and manufacturing processes dominate the overall life-cycle highlights the key limitations of the current linear model in which batteries are discarded only after 8-10 years of use.

This extract-produce-dispose model significantly increases the per-kWh environmental burden compared with that of a circular model that enables second-life applications and material recovery. Incorporating second-life use scenarios can markedly lower the climate-change impact per delivered kWh by increasing the total energy each battery (and its materials) provides over its lifetime, while reducing demand for virgin materials ¹ . Upcoming life-cycle inventory (LCI) data from the RECIRCULATE project will enable an accurate quantification of the benefits of second-life pathways designed to maximize battery use and minimize virgin materials demand.

Why Circularity Changes the Equation

Today, the battery value chain still behaves largely as a linear system: resources are extracted, batteries are manufactured and used in vehicles for a number of years, and then removed from service when they no longer meet vehicle performance requirements. From a life-cycle perspective, this means that a significant amount of embedded energy and materials are “locked” into a single use. Circular strategies change this equation by increasing the useful lifetime and therefore the total useful energy delivered by each battery and by recovering high-value materials at the end.

Even when a battery is no longer suitable for use in a vehicle, it often retains a substantial amount of its capacity. This residual performance can be harnessed in less demanding applications, such as stationary energy storage, backup power, or grid services. Giving batteries a second life can allow the same product to deliver considerably more energy over its existence. In environmental terms, the impacts of production are spread over a larger “service” life, which lowers the impact per unit of energy delivered.

The second lever is high-quality material and component recovery. Once further use is no longer technically or economically viable, efficient handling processes can recover critical materials/ components that would otherwise be lost. Returning these materials or components to the battery supply chain helps to reduce the need for virgin raw materials, with benefits not only for climate-related indicators but also for resource depletion and supply risks.

What This Means for Battery Value Chain Stakeholders

A key aspect for reducing the environmental footprint of lithium-ion batteries is to maximize the value obtained from each unit produced. RECIRCULATE is developing circular systems that enable second-life battery applications alongside advanced recycling and material recovery processes. By extending the productive use of each battery and efficiently recovering materials or components for new battery packs, complete battery replacement cycles can be reduced while minimizing waste generation and lowering the demand for virgin raw material extraction. The direct contributions of EoL stages (transportation, dismantling, and recycling) are comparatively modest relative to manufacturing in the baseline LCA. Yet, they remain critical enablers of circularity.

On the industrial side, OEMs and battery manufacturers need to design batteries with disassembly in mind, incorporating modular architectures that facilitate repair, refurbishment, and material recovery. Battery manufacturers play a key role in ensuring transparent material traceability through digital product passports and supporting documentation systems. Recyclers can contribute by investing in automation for a more efficient dismantling and high recovery rates, making circular pathways economically viable at scale. Energy storage operators will play an important role in deploying second-life applications that help amortize manufacturing impacts. Policymakers, in turn, must create coherent regulatory frameworks that mandate or incentivize circular design, support data transparency, and remove regulatory barriers to reuse.

Looking Ahead: Validating the Circular Advantage

The work completed so far offers a baseline view of how a representative electric vehicle battery performs in a largely linear scenario. The next phase of RECIRCULATE will integrate primary data covering automated dismantling, battery testing and grading, and repurposing for second-life applications.

This will allow the project team to quantify, under realistic operating conditions, how differing circular strategies can reduce environmental impacts, and under which circumstances they deliver the greatest benefits.

The forthcoming analysis will focus specifically on the stages after the battery no longer serves its original automotive purpose, capturing both the additional energy and material requirements of circular processes (transport, dismantling, reassembly, recycling) and the avoided impacts of virgin material extraction and new battery manufacturing in the baseline linear pathway.

Full comparative results incorporating primary RECIRCULATE process data are expected to be published by the second half of 2026, providing the battery industry with concrete guidance on how to optimize circular pathways and maximize environmental benefits.

The RECIRCULATE project is funded by the European Union’s Horizon Europe program and SERI, Swiss agency for Research and Innovation (Grant No. 101103972) and brings together partners across the battery value chain to develop and validate circular economy solutions for EV batteries.

References

Huber, Dominik, et al. “Powering the circular future: Climate change and economic perspectives on second-life batteries in the Belgian context.” Journal of Industrial Ecology 28.6 (2024): 1940-1951.

This article was by Violeta Vargas and Jose Daniel Cruz, advanced researchers at Eurecat. For more information, visit here .