Lithium battery recycling company Li-Cycle is planning its fourth facility in North America, the company said, as it made its first financial results release since listing on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in August. 

Former Tesla battery guru JB Straubel’s materials recycling company Redwood Materials has attracted more than US$700 million in investment.

Tesla has reported more than 200% year-on-year increases in both solar and energy storage deployments for the second quarter of this year, during which time the company also produced and delivered more than 200,000 vehicles.

Vertically-integrated vanadium mining, production and supply company Largo Resources wants to launch its own vanadium redox flow battery (VRFB) onto the market within a year-and-a-half, predicting that the technology will play a “critical role” in addressing significant demand for energy storage.

Lithium battery recycling company Li-Cycle now has capacity to recycle 10,000 tonnes a year of spent lithium-ion batteries, having just opened its Rochester, New York facility for commercial operations.

As demand for lithium-ion batteries from the solar energy industry grows, high standards of manufacturing processes are as important as cell design and materials, representatives of PI Berlin have said.

Germany-headquartered battery manufacturer Varta will receive €300 million (US$338 million) of government funding to develop large format lithium-ion cells, which has been deemed a project of potentially strategic interest for Europe.

While the performance of lithium batteries has increased tremendously, there’s still room for improvement to lower cost, increase sustainability and maximise their impact on decarbonisation, says Marcos Ierides, consultant and materials expert at innovation consultancy Bax & Company.

Production of commercial energy storage systems has begun at Tesvolt’s new 255MWh annual capacity factory in Wittenberg, Germany, with staff working in isolation due to the risk of COVID-19 infection.

BASF is using NGK Insulators’ sodium sulfur batteries as its entry point into the energy market, with the German chemical company signing up as a sales partner to the Japanese manufacturer.