WASHINGTON - The Responsible Battery Coalition (RBC), a coalition of leading battery industry and battery-use stakeholders, issued the following statement on the public-private partnership Li-Bridge’s “Building a Robust and Resilient U.S. Lithium Battery Supply Chain” report.
“The Li-Bridge report is conclusive: the U.S. needs to develop a domestic supply chain to advance electrification and not doing so is a risk to America’s national security, economic growth and environment,” said Steve Christensen, Executive Director of the Responsible Battery Coalition. “It is a bold plan for the United States to meet 60% of its commercial lithium-ion demand with domestic resources and a plan like this can only be achieved if we tackle the lack of raw materials in the United States and friendly countries to process. A commercially viable method of recycling lithium-ion batteries, whether they come from cars or reclaiming critical minerals in smaller devices, can help us grow the material supply at scale and reduce emissions associated with manufacturing EV batteries.”
Li-Bridge is a public-private partnership initiated by the U.S. Department of Energy, which tasked Argonne National Laboratory to partner with three U.S. trade associations to gather leading experts in lithium-ion battery technology to consult the federal government on how and why the United States should develop a competitive, leading industry for lithium-ion battery technologies.
The report analyzed the battery value chain in the United States and developed 26 specific recommendations to address the U.S. deficiency in lithium battery technology development and manufacturing.
According to Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, almost 60% of lithium refining in 2022 occurred in China, which also dominates the production of battery-grade cobalt, nickel and manganese. As well, much of the raw materials for batteries come from conflict-prone areas and their extraction can have serious environmental and human rights concerns. This gives greater urgency to initiatives that seek to tackle the supply chain challenges of the current strategy to decarbonize the transportation sector.
This has also been echoed by the Responsible Battery Coalition in an opinion piece in Utility Dive titled “A responsible supply chain and circular economy for batteries will be critical for EVs and electric utilities.”
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About the Responsible Battery Coalition
The RBC is a coalition of companies, academics, and organizations committed to the responsible management of the batteries of today and tomorrow. Members include: Advance Auto Parts, AutoZone, Clarios, FedEx, Ford Motor Company, Honda, Li-Cycle and O’Reilly Auto Parts. RBC was created in April 2017 to advance the responsible production, transport, sale, use, reuse, recycling and resource recovery of transportation, industrial and stationary batteries and other energy storage devices. For more information: https://www.responsiblebatterycoalition.org/
