As the US looks to build a domestic battery supply chain to rival China, recycling could be key to ensuring there are enough metals to meet demand.

“Right now in the US, there are far more electric vehicle factories and battery cell factories under construction than there is supply for those metals. So, in the near term, unfortunately, those facilities will largely be reliant on imported materials,” says Ryan Melsert, chief executive officer of startup American Battery Technology Company. “Battery recycling can play a large role in the near term as we take endoflife batteries and manufacturing defects, and are able to recover individual elements and return them to the domestic supply chain.”

Melsert, who was interviewed at the BNEF Summit San Francisco on January 31, 2023, notes the complementary impact of two key US policies. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill “really provided the push to the market to help get facilities built and the Inflation Reduction Act is much more the pull to give us higher value products and to increase their demand,” he says. “Those two bills really work in tandem to help support the domestic critical materials industry.”