How much of world demand recycling meets today
Recycled and reused material meets only a small share of world demand for the 3 metals used most in electric vehicle batteries. The International Energy Agency, the intergovernmental body that tracks world energy and mineral markets, publishes secondary supply, meaning metal recovered through recycling and reuse, alongside total demand for lithium, nickel and cobalt separately for 2024. Dividing the first number by the second for each metal gives about 3% for lithium, about 2% for nickel and about 12% for cobalt. Those 3 percentages are calculations made from the agency figures, not numbers the agency states directly as a percentage.
Nickel is source 2 and cobalt is source 3. All 3 figures are MAOWCE calculations, secondary supply and reuse divided by total demand for each metal in 2024, not percentages the agency states directly.
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| Lithium | 3 |
| Nickel | 2 |
| Cobalt | 12 |
Where the recycled material comes from
Almost none of that recycled material comes from batteries pulled out of old cars or phones yet. The agency finds that scrap left over from battery factories, meaning offcuts and rejected cells that never reached a customer, makes up two thirds of the material available for battery recycling worldwide through 2030. Batteries that reach the end of their working life in a vehicle or a device do not become the largest source of that material until after 2035. By 2050 the agency projects they will supply over 90% of the feedstock, the raw material a recycling plant actually processes.
A different number that is not the same finding
A separate agency figure is often confused with the shares above, and the 2 measure different things. In 2023 the agency found that recyclers recovered over 40% of the nickel and cobalt and 20% of the lithium contained in the batteries actually sent to them for recycling. That figure measures how efficiently a recycling plant extracts metal from the batteries it processes, not how much of new production comes from recycled material, which is the 3%, 2% and 12% figures above. The 2 percentages describe different steps in the same chain, and neither contradicts the other.
What the agency expects by 2050
The agency models 3 scenarios for 2050, depending on how fast the share of old batteries that gets collected keeps rising. Under its central projection, battery recycling could meet 20% to 30% of combined world lithium, nickel and cobalt demand by 2050. A faster rise in collection pushes that to 30% to 40%, and a slower rise leaves it at 15% to 25%. In Europe, where more batteries are already collected for recycling, the agency projects recycling could meet about 30% of lithium and nickel demand by 2050, against a world average of about 20%.
All 3 rows are the agency own policies scenario projections for 2050, combining lithium, nickel and cobalt demand worldwide. The difference between rows comes only from how fast the collection rate for old batteries keeps rising, not from a different data source.
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| Slower collection rate rise | 15% to 25% of demand |
| Central projection | 20% to 30% of demand |
| Faster collection rate rise | 30% to 40% of demand |
What the law requires and when
The European Union adopted a new law covering batteries and waste batteries on 12 July 2023, published in the Official Journal of the European Union on 28 July 2023. Before 2031, a maker selling a battery in the European Union has to disclose its recycled content, meaning the share of the battery material that came from recycling rather than newly mined ore, with no minimum required yet. From 2031, the law sets mandatory minimum recycled content requirements for cobalt, lead, lithium and nickel in new batteries, and those minimums rise again from 2036. The exact percentages sit in a later part of the law that this review could not confirm, so none are printed here.