Europe’s EV transition is often framed as a simple question: are EVs truly circular, or do they simply move our resource dependence from oil wells to lithium mines?
A new study published in the Journal of Cleaner Production by Diogo Silva, Marta Abrantes, and Patrícia Baptista at the University of Lisbon offers a more useful answer. The materials are coming back, and many of the batteries may serve the electricity grid before they get there. The catch is that neither is happening quickly enough to meet Europe’s earlier targets.
A growing urban mine
The researchers built a country-by-country model of the European EV fleet, covering the EU-27, the UK, Norway, Iceland, Switzerland, Turkey, and Liechtenstein. It tracks vehicles from sale through retirement, cross-border resale, second-life use, and recycling.
The long-term outlook is encouraging. The lithium, nickel, cobalt, and manganese embedded in Europe’s EV fleet could amount to millions of metric tons by 2045, creating a strategic reserve sitting in driveways rather than in mines abroad.
Recoverable volumes rise sharply from the late 2020s. In Luxembourg, recovered materials could exceed the requirements of new battery sales for all four critical elements by 2045. Germany, France, Belgium, and the UK also show strong recovery yields.
Gasoline is gone once it is burned. The metals in a battery’s cathode remain available to be recovered.
Why storage is the grids missing piece
The study’s most interesting insight is what happens between a battery’s first and final lives. This matters because battery energy storage systems are becoming central to the renewable energy transition.
Solar and wind are now among the cheapest sources of new electricity, but they do not generate power on demand. Without storage, grids must either curtail clean power when supply exceeds demand or turn to gas-fired generation when it falls short.
Battery storage closes this gap by absorbing surplus electricity and releasing it when needed. It can also respond to grid disturbances in milliseconds, helping to maintain stability as fossil-fuel generators retire.
South Australia demonstrated this potential to the world. Following a statewide blackout in 2016, the government backed a 100 MW battery to stabilize the grid, integrate more renewable energy, and reduce the risk of load shedding.
The Hornsdale Power Reserve, built by Tesla alongside a wind farm, quickly exceeded expectations. In 2019, it reduced electricity costs by A$116 million through frequency control services. It also helped return the grid to normal within minutes when South Australia became disconnected from the national network that November.
The project changed how the industry viewed the role batteries could play in a grid dominated by wind and solar.
EV batteries are already doing this work
This is where EVs and renewable energy converge.
A battery that no longer meets the demands of driving may still have substantial capacity remaining. Stationary storage asks far less of a battery than a vehicle does. Repurposing it extends its useful life, spreads its manufacturing footprint over more years of service, and reduces the need to produce new storage batteries from primary materials.
Europe has been testing this approach for years. At Amsterdam’s Johan Cruijff ArenA, home of Ajax, a 3 MW battery system complements the stadium’s rooftop solar installation. Built using a combination of new and second-life Nissan Leaf batteries, it stores solar power, provides backup electricity, and smooths the demand peaks created by concerts and sporting events.
In Leipzig, BMW connected as many as 700 new and used i3 batteries to the public grid and four on-site wind turbines. The system stores renewable electricity, helps reduce the plant’s energy costs, and provides balancing power to the wider grid.
The concept is now scaling further. In Nevada, Redwood Materials has built a 12 MW and 63 MWh microgrid using second-life EV batteries. Described by the company as the world’s largest second-life battery deployment, the system combines repurposed batteries with solar power to supply an AI data center.
The uncomfortable part
A balanced reading must also acknowledge the study’s more difficult findings.
Even if every end-of-life battery were collected, Europe is unlikely to meet the Battery Regulation’s recycled-content targets for 2031 and 2036. Cobalt shows the largest projected shortfall.
EV sales have risen substantially only in recent years, while batteries can remain in vehicles for well over a decade. The batteries required to supply recycled material have therefore not yet reached the end of their first lives.
Second-life storage cannot solve the immediate grid challenge either. Under the study’s most optimistic scenario, second-life EV batteries provide around 15.7 GWh of storage by 2030. Estimated EU demand is between 300 and 780 GWh.
New battery storage will need to provide most of the capacity required in the near term.
There is also an inherent trade-off. A battery serving the grid is not yet available for recycling. Under scenarios involving greater reuse, cumulative recycled material falls by approximately 20 to 25 percent.
Managing older packs also presents technical challenges. Batteries age at different rates, so operators must coordinate packs with varying levels of degradation while still delivering reliable and consistent power.
Reading the shortfall correctly
Despite these limitations, the broader picture favors electrification more than a quick reading might suggest.
The projected cobalt gap is partly a consequence of technological progress. The shift toward low-cobalt and cobalt-free chemistries, including lithium iron phosphate, is also reducing future cobalt demand. Missing a recycled-content target is not necessarily the same as failing to meet market demand.
The storage outlook also improves significantly over time. As the large EV cohorts sold during the 2020s and 2030s begin to retire, second-life storage capacity could reach approximately 2.58 TWh by 2045.
Projects in Amsterdam, Leipzig, and Nevada are early examples of a system that could eventually operate at continental scale.
Each battery could fulfill three roles: powering a vehicle, supporting the electricity grid, and finally supplying recycled materials for future batteries.
What leaders should do now
Policymakers should recognize that recycled-content targets and battery-retirement curves are currently out of sync. Complementary measures could include faster collection, incentives for domestic recycling, and the strategic stockpiling of recovered materials.
Energy planners must invest in new battery storage now while developing the safety standards, testing protocols, and markets that will allow second-life batteries to join the grid at scale as more EVs retire.
Industry should plan recycling capacity region by region, while battery traceability must be treated as essential infrastructure across the entire lifecycle.
The University of Lisbon model uses deterministic scenarios and assumes ideal collection rates. Its authors are clear about these limitations.
Its central message remains compelling. Electrification is building Europe a domestic materials reserve and a future storage fleet at the same time. The technology already works. The task now is to bridge the next 15 years while that system matures.