Sustainability implications of establishing a circular European supply chain of battery materials

The increasing number of electric vehicles worldwide leads to strategic challenges in designing battery supply chains. More sites for raw material extraction, battery production, and recycling will be needed to fulfill the future battery demand and the legislative goals regarding recycling rates, recycled content, CO2-limits, and social standards from the European Union for sustainable batteries. Battery manufacturers must also design their supply chains cost-efficiently to compete with non-European battery manufacturers. The environmental and socio-economic impacts of supply chains depend significantly on the supply chain design, which is expected to change in the upcoming years. Therefore, this study aims to investigate battery supply chains in the status quo and 2035 regarding all three sustainability dimensions using the life cycle sustainability assessment (LCSA). The status quo is modelled based on current market shares and without circular supply chains. For 2035, circularity is added with secondary materials in the production and more European-centered supply chains by moving the cell production and the recycling fully to Europe. The results provide insights into the design of sustainable battery supply chains. They highlight that moving a big part of the supply chains to Europe has a more significant influence on the environmental, social, and economic impacts than the circularity of materials. However, the results depend on the current supply chain design and future developments of products and processes as well as the electricity mix.