To mark Energy Day at COP27 and generate a legacy from this year’s discussions, Matthew Lumsden calls on consumers and businesses to understand that switching to electric vehicles is just the first step in the energy transition.
“To drive energy change faster, we need to look further ahead to the reuse of electric vehicle batteries at the end of their lives in a vehicle and ensure that we maximise the finite resources within them.
Battery storage holds the key to cleaner energy world, by storing power from renewables, but at present there is little recognition of the role that the reuse of batteries must play. We need to focus on the second life use of batteries in energy storage to deliver the energy security, carbon savings and resource stewardship we need.
It is well known that when driving you need to look further ahead to stay safe. Not only are we not looking far enough ahead, but we’ve also got a blind spot concerning battery reuse.
Second life should come first, when it comes to energy storage. It is the reuse of existing EV batteries that makes best use of technology and resources and will enable us to deliver the greatest carbon savings and transformation to our energy systems. Industry projections suggest that by 2030, around one million tonnes of EV batteries could be available for reuse. This second life application is the one we need to celebrate at COP27 and share best practice about today.
