World Economic Forum: CATL’s Robin Zeng calls for setting aside geopolitical tensions to address EV battery materials shortage
- ‘We are fighting climate change … so whatever the geopolitical issues are, we have to find a way,’ CATL founder tells Davos panel
- By 2042, China will no longer need to mine new mineral materials because of its mature battery recycling market: Zeng
Countries – from government leaders to businesses and non-governmental organisations – must collaborate to accelerate innovation in the EV battery industry to ensure a resilient supply chain, reduce dependency on critical metals and decarbonise the transport sector to tackle the climate crisis, Zeng told the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos.
“We should really avoid any geopolitical issues in [battery] recycling technologies,” he said during a panel on Wednesday. “If we can provide these recycling technologies to Europe, to the US and to the rest of the world, it’d be very easy to manage mining issues.
“The demand for critical materials might increase by five times in the next 10 years, considering the fast growth of the industry. But at the end of the day, when we achieve 100 per cent electric cars, there will be very tiny amounts of new critical materials to be mined.”
China leads the world in battery recycling technologies, an important solution for addressing battery material shortages.
For instance, Zeng told the forum that CATL currently has the capacity to recycle as much as 99.6 per cent of precious metals such as nickel, cobalt and manganese, and up to 91 per cent of lithium, higher than Europe’s capacity of 70 per cent to 80 per cent. Last year, CATL recycled 100,000 tonnes of waste batteries through its subsidiary Brump to create 13,000 tonnes of lithium carbonate, he said.