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.

Global disruptions have always fostered booms in innovation and COVID-19 is no different. Now, the innovators at the forefront of energy and green technologies must create solutions faster than ever to help to solve this monumental global challenge and Build Back Better.

An energy storage system made up of ‘second life’ batteries previously used in Renault’s electric vehicle (EV) has been deployed for Umicore, a multinational materials technology company headquartered in Belgium.

Lithium-ion waste from a solar lantern scheme run by oil & gas major Total in Kenya will be recycled into new batteries for solar home systems by start-up Aceleron.

While recycling of lithium and other materials such as cobalt from batteries will greatly increase in the coming years, the potential availability of second life batteries should not be underestimated, according to new research and data.

With carbon reduction goals a long way off from being met in Europe’s transport sector, energy storage can play a key role in coupling transportation and energy technologies, the European Association for Storage of Energy (EASE) has said.

EDF Energy has partnered with Nissan to launch a new energy storage proposition using second life batteries with the utility’s proprietary demand side response (DSR) platform in the latest high profile collaboration in the UK energy sector.

There will be no benefit to basing home energy storage systems on automotive batteries, in the medium or long term, a representative of Mercedes-Benz Energy has said.