Search

The transition to climate-neutrality is expected to boost the demand for batteries in the coming years. If the EU wants to be competitive in the global market of battery manufacturing it has to ensure a sustainable, secure supply of raw materials needed for the batteries value chain. Therefore, reliable systemic information on recent availability of these raw materials within the EU economy is crucial to identify hotspots and define ways to secure their sustainable supply. Material System Analysis (MSA) can provide crucial information for the recent past on sustainable resource management, including the provision of evidence to inform policy decision-making on the sustainable and competitive supply of e.g. battery raw materials. This report focuses on the MSA studies of five selected materials used in batteries: cobalt, lithium, manganese, natural graphite, and nickel. It summarises the results related to material stocks and flows for each material. The MSA studies, were performed for five consecutive reference years, i.e. from 2012 to 2016. This report however presents only the MSA results for 2016. Priority has been given to official and publicly available data sources. Because of their importance for the future battery value chain in Europe, the five MSA have been harmonised considering the latest available datasets publicly available on batteries stocks and flows (update from the ProSum database). The five battery-related materials analysed show a very strong reliance on imports along the value chain. In particular the material systems are all highly dependent on imports of primary and/or semi-processed materials. The EU self-sufficiency was analysed separately for each stage. For the extraction stage, naturals graphite had the lowest value of EU self-sufficiency in 2016 (less than 1% of the amount used in manufacturing was extracted in the EU), while nickel had the highest (37% of nickel in its primary forms was extracted in the EU). For the EU manufacturing stage, 75% of the products containing cobalt and lithium consumed in the use stage were produced in the EU, in 2016. On the other hand, the EU manufacturing of manganese, natural graphite and nickel products was self-sufficient to satisfy the EU consumption and supplying the external market. For all these materials the functional recycling of old scrap is still low and under development in the EU. Cobalt has the highest end-of-life recycling input rate (EOL-RIR) with 22%, while for lithium, this rate is close to 0%. This indicates that the EU is currently able to only slightly decrease its dependency on primary material using secondary materials recycled domestically. For the period covered by the MSA (2012-2016), results confirm that battery manufacturing has not been a dominant application. Based on the strong promotion of clean technologies, the demand for these raw materials is expected to multiply. As a consequence, imports of these materials will intensify, as domestic processing and manufacturing increases. The situation is however less clear for the net balance of the final products (containing these materials). In the coming years, the expansion in EU capacity to produce significant amounts of batteries and related final products will determine industry’s competitiveness on the world battery market., JRC.D.3-Land Resources

Microalgae are an attractive way to produce biofuels due to the ability to accumulate lipids and very high photosynthetic yields. This article presents a review of life-cycle assessment studies of microalgae biodiesel production, including an analysis of modeling choices and assumptions. A high variation in GHG emissions (between -0.75 and 2.9 kg CO2eq MJ-1) was found and the main causes were investigated, namely modeling choices (e.g. the approach used to deal with multifunctionality), and a high parameter uncertainty in microalgae cultivation, harvesting and oil extraction processes.

The use microalgae biomass for the production of biofuels has received great attention in the last decades. Microalgae biofuels could be important alternative to conventional biofuels since microalgae could be produced at high rates without the need of neither arable land, potable water or competition with food. However, the high energy intensive harvesting processes are limiting the commercial production of microalgae biofuels. In this study, Electro-Coagulation (EC) was used for harvesting the freshwater microalga Chlorella vulgaris and the marine microalga Nannochloropsis sp. The results show that EC could be an alternative to the conventional harvesting processes since it is efficient and produces good quality biomass with low energy requirements.

Apresenta-se nesta curta comunicação a problemática referente à introdução dos biocombustíveis nos transportes em Portugal na sequência da transposição para a legislação nacional das diferentes diretivas europeias (2003 e 2009). A produção de biocombustíveis em território nacional tem vindo a aumentar na sequência da política nacional de promoção dos mesmos embora as matérias-primas utilizadas (oleaginosas) sejam praticamente todas importadas com exceção do uso de matérias residuais. Particular atenção é dedicada aos dois critérios de sustentabilidade obrigatórios para que um dado biocombustível seja considerado “produzido de forma sustentável”, abordando-se ainda a problemática das alterações indiretas do uso da terra (ILUC) na sequência da recente proposta da Comissão Europeia em rever a atual diretiva nesta matéria.

Raw materials form an industrial base to provide the wide range of products and services demanded by industry and society. In particular, manganese, nickel, and natural graphite are examples of materials having a globally consolidated supply chain with interlinked use in steelmaking and essential role in clean energy systems and e-mobility. A stable material supply chain is hence a priority for import-dependent regions like the EU and builds upon quantitative system understanding. To this aim, the EU Material System Analysis is applied to analyze the anthropogenic cycle of manganese, nickel, and natural graphite from 2012 to 2016. We provide a detailed characterization of their material stocks, flows, and changes in selected performance indicators including end-of-life recycling rate (51% +/- 3%, 49% +/- 8%, and 8% +/- 0% for manganese, nickel, and natural graphite, respectively), self-sufficiency potential (40% +/- 3%, 32% +/- 5%, and 5% +/- 1%), old scrap ratio (31% +/- 0%, 22% +/- 2%, and 90% +/- 1%), recycling input rate (25% +/- 1%, 38% +/- 2%, and 3% +/- 0%), recycling process efficiency rate (84% +/- 2%, 85% +/- 6%, and 48% +/- 3%), and pre-consumer losses rate (83% +/- 3%, 5% +/- 1%, and 24% +/- 2%). The achieved results may inform decision-makers engaged with raw materials recovery and recycling as well as the strategic securement of a reliable material supply to the EU for resilient industrial ecosystems.