The UK House of Lords has today called on the Government to increase its investment in facilities for the recycling of EV batteries and recovery of critical minerals, as part of a series of recommendations intended to drive the uptake of EVs and the transition to net zero.

In its newly published EV Strategy report, the Environment and Climate Change Committee sets out a number of measures to support buyers of EVs and also urges “a step-change in investment” to ensure that critical battery minerals are recovered from end-of-life batteries and put back into a domestic supply chain. 

As the report notes: “The end-of-life management and recycling of electric vehicles (EVs) and their batteries is key to the EV transition. 

“First, recycling and reusing EV batteries is critical to maximising the positive environmental impact of the transition. 

“Second, recovering the critical minerals in EV batteries will promote a circular economy in domestic production and reduce reliance on imports in vulnerable global supply chains.”

Altilium is currently the only company in the UK recovering these critical battery metals from battery waste to produce cathode active materials (CAM) for direct reuse in new batteries. 

The company’s “EcoCathode”™ process recovers over 95% of the battery metals, reducing carbon emissions by over 50% and reducing the cost of CAM by more than 20% compared to conventional mining practices.

The House of Lords report recommends that the Government “urgently review and progress opportunities to rapidly accelerate investment in black mass processing facilities and critical minerals extraction facilities in the UK in the medium term.”

Other recommendations include:

• Exploring options for speeding up planning and permitting processes for new treatment facilities.
• A review of current UK regulations for waste batteries.
• Increasing the minimum recycled amount of an EV battery to above 50%. 
• Introducing minimum recovery amounts from EV batteries for specific critical minerals, including Lithium.