When more electric vehicles are sold, more EV batteries will need to be recycled.
Courtesy Redwood MaterialsTechnology transitions always raise new questions while investors, and the public, learn the pros and cons of the new technology.
Electric vehicles are no different. Debates about range, cost, and convenience have raged for years, along with debates about how “green” EVs really are.
They do happen to be “greener” and a deal between Toyota Motor (TM) and recycling startup Redwood Materials, announced Thursday, reveals how some of the EV environmental concerns will be addressed.
Redwood, which was founded by early Tesla (TSLA) executive J.B. Straubel, and Toyota announced a battery recycling and material procurement deal. Toyota will buy cathode materials and copper from Redwood’s recycling operations.
A cathode is one side of a battery that facilitates the movement of electrical charge. An EV battery cathode includes combinations of elements such as lithium, iron, cobalt, and others.
“Accelerating our recycling efforts and domestic component procurement gets us closer to our ultimate goal of creating a closed-loop battery ecosystem that will become increasingly important as we add more vehicles with batteries to roads across North America,” said Christopher Yang, group vice president for business development at Toyota Motor North America, in a news release.
Batteries are partly made out of metals and metals get recycled. Not all of the metals that will end up in EVs will come out of the ground. The environmental impact of mining can be significant. But a key difference between metals and oil, which also comes out of the ground, is that metals, essentially, last forever and get recycled. Oil gets consumed.
In that way, the battery is more like a really expensive gasoline tank than it is like the gasoline in the tank. The gasoline is more like the electricity in the battery. The EV environmental debate should start with the energy used to recharge a battery versus gasoline. Today, about 40% of U.S. electricity is generated by assets that don’t generate carbon dioxide, the main gas blamed for global climate change. That includes nuclear, hydro, wind, and solar electricity generation.
Mining and mining practices still matter, but metal industries are simply not comparable in size to energy markets. Take Albemarle (ALB) and Exxon Mobil (XOM). Albemarle is the world’s largest lithium miner. Its lithium business is expected to generate sales of about $7 billion in 2023. If every light vehicle sold each year globally was fully electric, and Albemarle maintained its global market share, sales would be closer to $70 billion. Exxon’s sales in 2023 are expected to amount to $350 billion. And Exxon has less market share in oil than Albemarle has in lithium.
Don’t forget too that about twice as much coal is taken out of the ground as oil. Coal is mainly burned to generate electricity.
New technologies, such as EVs, always generate new businesses like Redwood. It isn’t publicly traded yet. Li-Cycle (LICY) is another battery recycling startup. Its shares have fallen 88% over the past year while the S&P 500 has risen about 14% and the Nasdaq Composite has gained about 26%.
No one said that starting up new businesses serving a growing, disruptive technology would be easy.
Write to Al Root at allen.root@dowjones.com
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