New Cathodes Now and Recycling Later: Dynamic Scenarios to Reduce Battery Material use and Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Light-duty Electric Vehicle Adoption in the U.S.

Abstract

Electric vehicles (EV) have an important role in mitigating climate change impacts from personal travel. Increasing the uptake of EVs requires a substantial increase in the production of lithium-ion batteries (LIB), which largely rely on critical metals and contribute to EV life cycle emissions. By using a fleet life cycle assessment model, we evaluated the battery material demand and GHG emissions implications from high EV penetration rates for the US light-duty vehicle (LDV) fleet from 2020-2050. Our findings demonstrated that there are significant supply constraint risks for cobalt, lithium, and nickel, if the US relies primarily on EV deployments to achieve its 2˚C sectoral mitigation target. We also found that increasing recycling, shifting battery chemistry, and adopting renewable energy sources for battery production can avoid 330 million tonnes in cumulative GHG emissions from 2020-2050. This is equivalent to 20% of the US transportation sector’s annual GHG emissions in 2020.